Thursday May 30th 2004:

     Coordination

     To get business out of the way. There will be a party at my house next Saturday at around 1 pm. I will have 1 box of box wine. I will share it but I guarantee it won't last long. Thus, I recommend you bring other alcoholic beverages to drink if that's your thing. I should also mention there's a pool and hot tub. So bring a friggin' towel. Otherwise I can't be responsible for the repercussions of not doing so. On top of that, the following Sunday next weekend will be host to the start of the 2004 Steve's Backyard Boxing season. Hopefully there will be more than one event this year. At least that's what I hope.

     The other news is that's it I think. There's also camping in Warsaw (or near there) on the Friday before my party. I'm trying not to get my hopes up though since it's very possible that I could be working on that day. Speaking of work, the job at Sportstime is going pretty great. The first week as a server has gone pretty well with out too many screw ups. On top of great people to work with, the job isn't too tough and I get a free beer and meal every shift.

     The only thing I'm concerned about is money. At the rate right now, I probably will not make the $2500 I want to have. On the plus side my dad has given me someone to call about getting a job with GE, whom he works for, in Bloomington. Though I'm as skeptical as I have been with getting a job with IU.

     I should explain that last sentence. If you read one my April posts you'll see the entry of about how I spent an hour or so writing a cover letter for some job. It's listing was a bit vague. From what I gathered I would be editing the IU Knowledge Base Database. I know a bit about databases, HTML, websites, writing out or solving technical computer problems so I figured I could do it. Well after doing all that crap, I get this "you do not have the skills" reply from them. I was a bit annoyed since I spent an hour writing out bullshit when they could have easily checked my damn resume to see I'm not knowledged in whatever the hell they were looking for.

     Fast forward to a month later. I get this email from IU. It's gist was basically: "Sorry you didn't get the job you applied for. Try this website to look for my IU jobs." I click the link and I find more jobs to apply for. They were just as vague. I see one job that was labeled something like "content editor." It was $10/hour, it asked for knowledge in databases, programming languages, and HTML I think. Anyway I sent an email to the address to ask when they were looking to fill the job. With an hour I get a reply that basically stated: "You already applied for this job (on previous date). That was the salary position, this is the hourly position. You still don't have the skills for this job."

     So apparently the people that hire at UTITS live in some magical land where they think the give someone $8/hour (after taxes) and have some great skill set that has more value than what they are paying for. To that I say bullshit. $8/hour isn't much especially living in a college town where the cost of living is higher than around here. $8/hour is what you expect for some entry level position. For $8/hour you should be able to figure out within a month or so what your job encompasses and be pretty decent at it.

     Whatever, screw UTITS. I just hate having to deal with this money problem bullshit. I hate money. Hmm, I've got to take a break from this writing. My cynicism is starting to get so sharp I'm going to cut myself soon with it. See you next post.


Thursday May 21st, 2004:

     Nothing to see, move along

     My weekend begins with a whole lot of needed sleep. I'm still trying to adjust my sleep cycle to having to wake up at 10 am. I know it's not that early but it's just the fact I have to use an alarm to do it. I haven't had to use an alarm for a few months. Going back to using it is just to annoying to say the least. I think I am adjusting though. I woke up on my own accord at 9:30 am today. Of course I went back to sleep but I could have gotten up if I had the initiative.

     I just finished the conclusion to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly today. We watched at Steve's last night but we weren't able to finish it thanks to the fact it was an old dubbed copy. It was great. I was thinking while watching about how old westerns and old kung fu/samurai are kind of similar: They both romanticize the life of icons from the past; they both have their own cheesy quirky clichés; they both focus on fighting albeit the weapons are different; and both the genres have influenced the films we see today. I think it's all the more evident too when you look at how well Tarantino integrates both aspects superbly in Kill Bill.

     I'm going to try to make this post as big and assorted as possible. It might be awhile before I get back to posting. I'm going to be even more busy in the next few weeks. Aside from school I know have a part-time job working at Sportstime. Like I've explained before I need money to pay off debts and save up for the adventure in Bloomington. This will hopefully get me somewhere near that.

     And lest I not forget, there's still the DVD to be completed. Right now I'm trying to finish up the opening animation of the feature disc. I'm almost done and what I've shown to Ted has gotten his overwhelming approval. Aside from that I've also hit another little technical hurdle. That is Adobe Encore is a piece of shit. While it's really easy to use. It's filled with annoying bugs that won't let you import subtitle transcripts correctly and worse of all corrupts your save files. I've had to try to start over the project a handful of times to get this thing to work. At this point I got fed up and decided that I'm not going to use the program. I'd really like to but these problems are just too much of a hassle. I'm quite disappointed, usually Adobe's products are top notch. But Encore is just a piece of shit.

     Well I'm going to get some other important work done. I will return.


Thursday May 13th, 2004:

     More...

     I ended up caving and getting Internet access again. At first I was deciding that it wasn't necessary since I'm at IUS 4 of the 7 days of the week but then I realized how useful it is to have it at home. More than anything it's for work on GCBC. With Internet access, it's much easier to lookup info needed, get graphics/examples, or virtual collaboration with Ted. By the way, I highly recommend FlexNet for cheap dialup Internet access. It's $10/month, and no bullshit client to download like AOL or NetZero.

     Last night I was at a party at Sarah's. It wasn't too big of a party, but it was fun. I played a couple of games of Go. I did pretty well considering I hadn't played in a couple of months. I should start to play more often. The only problem is that I need to find more people to play with.

A Rant

     Today I've been reading about all the talk from E3 about the new games to come out in the next year or so. It's a bit sad because with all the lack of $ as of late I haven't been able to embellish in one my favorite pastimes. It sucks a lot, but at least I've found other things to do. I've also used this situation as an opportunity to take a step back and look at gaming from a different perspective. A perspective a industry/culture that is too wrapped up sequels and pretty graphics. Now I'm not going to get all nostalgic and say that games were better back in the old days. That's just not true.

     What I am going to say is that the number of sequels/franchises and the marketing for such has gotten a bit out of hand. I look at the list new games and I see GTA: San Andreas, Halo 2, Half Life 2, Final Fantasy XII, and so on. Even my beloved Tekken has a new iteration coming out soon. I don't want to brag but I predicted quite a few things that happened with Tekken 5: Jin Kazama won the 4th tournament, Jack would be back, one of the new characters Asuka Kazama resurrects Jun Kazama's fighting style, and that Heihachi would finally die in the new Tekken(though I wouldn't be surprised if he's in Tekken 5 as a secret character).

     Maybe I'm just getting old, or maybe I'm just tired of feeling like I'm playing the same games with small graphical and game play tweaks. I'm tired of seeing a bunch of fanboy magazines out there promoting the latest graphical fluff with tons of screenshots and no words about the game plays or feels. I'm tired of games being marketed with the same stupid CGI cut scenes and no talk about game play. I'm tired of great studios filled with talented people being bought by huge publishing giants just for the sake of acquiring popular franchises.

     Back 4 or 5 years ago in high school I looked at video games as not only entertainment, but also as an medium that could do so much more; Video games could do the same thing that books and movies achieve as well. I now look back and see that I was naive. I was expecting videogame to mature as art form. What I should have realized, like with movies, TV, and much less so with books, that the majority of the industry just cares about well...being an industry. Artistry is a side note to the fact that there's units to sell, hype to create, markets to create, and masses to purchase your product.

     I should have realized that's what the majority of videogaming was going to become. That's what it is and what it's likely to remain as for the majority of the public. And it's no different from an other industry whose products are artistic in nature. My only hope that while all this junk gets cranked out that every now again you do get something that's done very very well. You get masterpieces that transcend above the standard set formulas/genres/molds and you get something that you can truly call art.

     Now I'm just being overly dramatic but some where in there lies some bit of truth. I let you decide what that truth is. For now I'm going to head out of here. Laters people.


Wednesday May 12th, 2004:

     3 down, 2 to go...

     I just got my grades off of SSINFO today: 2 B's and 1 C. That probably could have been 2 A's but I stopped caring near the end. Oh well, I do not care any more about classes. I shouldn't say that though. I'm not out of the metaphorical woods yet. I've got back to back Spanish clases this summer. With the completion of those comes the completion of my major. Spectactular.

     This isn't the first thing on my mind however. Right now I'm more concerned with finding a job (which I haven't done yet), getting the feature disc of GCBC done, and other details in my life. I've also made it a point to see at least one person I haven't seen in a while one day each week. So far so good at this point.

     If I'm not the most coherent that's because I've got lots of things on my mind. For example: I saw the eye doctor on Monday. The diagnosis: most like eye strain combined with the fact I'm slight farsighted in one eye and nearsighted with a bit of astigmatism in the other eye. It's not that big of a problem but I imagine it will get worse with age. I got a prescription for a set of glasses but I wasn't able to order them yet; The clinic was able to determine wether I have eye coverage under my parents insurance. Hopefully I am. If not, it's not that big of deal. My eyes are pretty good as they are. It's just that these would help take off some of strain.

     Hmm, I've probably been here too long. I'm going to head back to my house and get more work done. See you around.


Sunday May 6th, 2004:

     It's good to be back

     Well here I am, back in town and loving it. There's no rest for the wicked however. I've still got many things to do. Not the least of which is finding a job so I have some sort of income. Income to pay off deby and income to live in Bloomington at the end of the summer. I'll try to keep posts in here fresh but like I said before I have no internet connection. I'll only be jumping on the Internet when I'm here at IUS like I am now.

In other great news, the bonus disc for the Good Cop, Bad Cop... DVD is completed. After lengthy negotiations, wheeling and dealing, Ted and I were able to manage to secure those precious right to SkitZowolf. You'll be glad to know that Ted and I transferred it last night to my computer. We did a test burn of the DVD and everything worked like expected. All that remains for me is to fix a minor problem with one of the menus, then burn the master copy. After that, all our work can shift to the feature disc. Ted and I already have the plans laid out for the menus and all that. Most of the work involves me learning how to use Adobe Encore and Ted finishing up the source video.

I'm really excited about the bonus disc being done but it's just one step. We still have much to do. I am not daunted however. It's been many length hours, and it has taken much determination but it will pay off this summer when I have my own copy of Good Cop, Bad Cop, and a Rogue (Special Edition) in my hands. I can tell you now this will be the funniest work that Gohmann Studios has ever produced; If on your journey you should encounter god, God himself will laugh his ass off.

Well I'm must head forth toward other adventures, pursuits, and goals. We shall meet again....

 


Sunday May 6th, 2004:

     ...Do you know what's going on?

     The only thing I'm doing in this town is killing time. I want to be done with work, done with this semester, and done with anything that has anything to do with West Lafayette. So far I've passed much time with Sim City 4 but that can only get me so far. You know you're itching to leave when you find yourself looking around your room seeing what you don't need there, and after making that decision taking the aforementioned stuff and putting it in the trunk of your car; The only thing that isn't in my car is a box of computer stuff, some clothes, dirty laundry, sleeping stuff, and my computer. All my other shit is been in the car for awhile.

     I decided that I need to wear my lab coat more often and calling myself "Dr. Feelgood". Alongside that, I'm going to start using computers less. That will also be complimented by the fact that I won't have Internet access; I thought about getting it this summer but it's one cost I do not need. Instead, I'll probably go to IUS with my laptop if I need the Internet that bad. I'll be there 4-5 days of the week this summer so it won't be out of the way. That also means less posts from me. Not that it matters much since I haven't had much to say in the past few days, um weeks.

     I've gotten this fear that I won't be able to make enough money this summer for my plans. That or find a job in Bloomington. I've been looking a lot but I haven't came up with much. I got a email back from UITS, whom I'll now refer to as UTITS as it's much more funny, who said "I do not have the skills for this job." Annoyed that wasted my time for an hour or so writing some bullshit cover letter, I was going to send a sarcastic reply back to the effect of "Thanks sweetheart, next time tell me exactly what 'skills' you guys are looking for." But I decided against since they did get back to me quite promptly. I hate jobs that don't even tell you anything.

     More than that I hate job ads, or wanted listings that post a bunch of bullshit about they want. They always read like crap; They're too vague. I want a job listing to post exactly what I'll be doing in 4 or less sentences. That way if I don't know what the hell they are talking about I know not to apply for the job. Instead, they write about things that could cover a ton of different areas ("knowledge of databases", "web experience", "excellent at writing") which make me think I could do their job. But really, I think I do most jobs out there that don't require a ton of technical knowledge. I put more investment in common sense and the ability to communicate over technical knowledge any day.

     This reminds me, tonight I have to go looking for jobs in the Louisville area. Hopefully I can find something that pays decent that I can do over the summer. I need to have some sort of savings by the end of the summer if I'm to move off to Bloomington.

 

     So move this post into something a little more deep, I was thinking of the other day about losing the fear of death. I think over the past, I would say 5 years, that I like to think that don't fear it anymore. Yeah, sure that's easy to say when you're only 24 years old, but what's there to fear about it?

     For me, I think the biggest fear about the death is not so much the dying part. I think it's more the fear of the end of your consciousness or the fear of being lonely. At least has been the case for me. The fear of no longer being consciousness I think just stems from a general fear of the unknown. All I know about my existence is well...that. Such a change where I am no longer in existence scares me because it's scary and unknown.

     As far as fear of being lonely, well that's human nature. We are social creatures. At some point in our lives we rely on someone else for help, whether it be physical or emotional. It's built into our human nature that we seek out others. With your death becomes your detachment from everyone. Losing everyone, is a big loss to say the least.

     That combined with your loss of existing is definitely something that's grave(to use a smartass pun). I think that's why religions have some sort of afterlife aspect to it; It deals with both fears. One, you won't be alone once you die: you'll be in the same place everyone else that has died. And two, you will be in some conscious form. Whether you believe this to be true, well that's a matter of faith.

     A big portion of the reason why religions exist is because people are afraid of death. It's also interesting to note that western religion seems to focus an existence beyond death whereas many eastern religion focus on transcending it. Not transcending in that you'll be immortal but rather looking beyond just the scope of your life and coming to terms that it isn't so important what happens after you die.

     I tend to take that point of view now a days. Dying is only scary when you think about it too much. In the end, it doesn't serve any purpose to really think about it. Thinking about it won't help you not die. All it does is worry you. Life's too short for that. And, in the end dying is such a tiny part of life there's no real reason to think about it so much beyond making sure everything you wanted done is wrapped up before you're gone. I look at it with the same scope of all those other steps in life( being born, starting school, graduating, and so on). It's just another step to me. Sure it sucks not to be around anymore, but I've already had so many happy memories I think I could die tomorrow and be a very content person.


Sunday May 2nd, 2004:

     For all my Fans

     I regretfully must inform you that I won't be home as early as I thought. You see I have 3 finals, 2 on Monday, and 1 on Friday. Originally, I was gonna have the Friday final moved to Monday so that I could get home that night. Under further consideration, I've decided to stay until Friday. This is because: 1 I need as much money as possible(i.e. I can work this week), 2 This is my last week in West Lafayette(probably for good) so I might as well enjoy, and 3 I just don't want it to be all hectic on Monday. The only sucky thing about this decision is that my final is at 7-9pm. Thus I'll probably won't be in town until late. It sucks but hey, I'll be back home for good.

     Well that is until I move up to IU after the summer. I'm not so certain about all the details yet but I've been working on a few. I was browsing the IU's HR(Human Relations) website tonight applying for various jobs. It went pretty well, I found about 3 jobs that require the skills I had. And also one of the coolest jobs ever, a Cyclotron Support Technician. I applied for that too just based on the name. I didn't find out what the hell a Cyclotron was until Sam told me it's a big ring of magnets used to accelerate subatomic particles. The likelihood of me getting such a job is next to nothing, but hey I can say I at least tried.

     In other news I finished Final Fantasy X-2 tonight. My analysis? Mediocre. It's not so much the game. Like most Square RPG's, it's fun to play. They tweaked FF X game to be more action-like which is cool, and there's a shitload of fun little mini games to play. The biggest problem with the game is the story; it's absolutely retarded. I'll spare you the details of the story, I'll just sum it up like this. FF X had a great story,it was the best FF game I played since 7. FF X-2 is kinda cool in that it's a follow up story to FF X(unlike all the other FF games this one has all the same characters/world/story that was in the last one), but the main plot is this stupid girly girl(and I really mean girly) bullshit that's dumb as hell.

     But, I shrugged it off because the game was fun to play. So I struggled through the BS story parts. It took me about 47 hours to get through the game. Once I did, I found out I got the "bad" ending. I find out to get the "good" ending you have to do everything possible in the game. My list of things I hate about videogames is small, but one of the numbers high on the list is multiple endings that force you to go back through it to get a better ending. This was the last element of FF X-2's story that killed it for me. It's a pity too because FF X-2 has a new game+ feature; a feature started by Chrono Trigger that I think every RPG should have.

     Well that's it for now, I'll keep you informed later...


Tuesday April 27th, 2004:

     Less than a week remaining

     My posts have been indicative of how busy I've been with things. There's only 1 obstacle left and finals before my work here is done. That thought alone has consumed my mind lately. I just want to be done. Right now my mind is in it's preparation state. I'm trying to get ready to get everything in order to leave. I want to make sure I leave no ends untied when I leave hopefully on Monday. Hopefully means that my CS professor will be kind enough to let me take the final on Monday so I don't have to be here.

     But enough about school. My birthday came and went. It was better than I thought it would be thanks to some great friends. The actual day I turned 24 wasn't really that exciting however. All I did was play Sim City 4(with the Rush Hour expansion that cost me $5) and do some homework. Not really much celebrating, but I'm okay with that. Being 24 is a lot like 23 anyhow.

     One of my favorite sites as of late has been Wikipedia. I came across a while back looking up information about Nobuo Uematsu. It's such a great idea, an open dictionary that's free to all to put information in it. Aside from that, it's super-linked together. Just looking up one topic let's you learn about subtopics, related topics, and a bunch of other extraneous information. I found myself the other day just spending an hour looking up one topic after another. I even put in some entries myself for them about the Build engine, Jump instruction, and help add to their Tekken page. I like to think the people I know have a lot of knowledge in various different areas. So I recommend you check a topic you know a lot about see if you can help add to their base of knowledge or elaborate more on it.

     So today I skipped out on the class thing and decided to meet up with Garcia, Chris, and my good buddy Alex. It was much fun beer, pizza, good conversations. Good times. These are the moments that you realize what life is about, enjoying yourself and not giving a fuck about anything. I did pay a bit for it though. All the alcohol I drank made me a bit sick. I've already been feelin' like crud lately. I'm not sure what it is. It feels like a cold. I'm hoping with a bit of exercise and vitamin C through this week I can work it off. I've got one more project left to go, and I don't need this keeping me down.

     Before I get the fuck out of here I got one more link for you guys. It's a site for NES time attack movies. You might not be able to appreciate them if you weren't a fan of all these old NES games, but I still find them impressive. Also it should be mentioned that they aren't played so much as engineered. They're done through emulators using save states and slow down tricks so they're not as impressive as a real person doing it. The stuff they do is inhumanly possible but it's neat to see what could be done if you were lightning fast. I still think that's worth a look at if anything else.

Another funny thing I think is the Japanese title of "Bionic Commando" is listed on the site: Hitler no Fukkkatsu(i.e. Hitler Resurrection). I think that's kind of funny that Capcom changed the title of the game(and all the other references to Nazis). It's just funny how people have to go out of their way in this country to make sure they don't offend people.


Thursday April 22nd, 2004:

Days Left in West Lafayette: 12

Number of School Assignments remaining: 3

Days Until My Birthday: 3

     I'm not really excited so much about those numbers as I should be. I am excited about soon being done forever with having to do anything with this town. I'm just so busy though I really haven't had the time to relish in the moment. Speaking of being done with this town, one of the supervisors at my job asked for me to stay on at the labs into the summer. I informed my boss Jon that I had to go back home to complete my major. He told me to email him once I completed the major for job opportunities after graduation. On one hand it's nice to see my work is appreciated there and they would like to keep me. On the other hand though I don't think I would ever want to stay on there. I've had my fill of West Lafayette & Kokomo. I don't think I want to stay around even if it $20/hour+ benefits. $20/hour ain't worth it if you don't like the place you live.

     On the subject of my birthday, it probably isn't going to be that happy. I'll probably be working (job or school) either way. And it's not like I'm going to get anything I want for my birthday anyhow. The only thing I'm getting is money which is just going to go to pay off bills. It's a pity I can't spend on other things, but there's not too much I want right now. If I did want something for my birthday it'd probably be booty. It's been a long time since I've gotten any action thanks to a lot of factors I just don't care to go into lately...

From India with CAPS LOCKS

     If you chaps remember sometime a month ago, you'll recall an incident where I got the privilege of reading an email India's own prabhdeep singh padda. You'll also recall about the same time a 1000 something English teachers were moaning in agony from his horrible butchery of the English language. Luckily for him, (and the readers) I was able to cleverly decipher his English not unlike deciphering the dead sea scrolls. Well guess what? Another one of Indian bloke decided to email me about Tekken once again as follows(I recommend reading in an Indian accent with EMPHASIS ON THE CAPITAL WORDS):

HELLO SIR
I read your faq . IT IS AS GOOD AS IT CAN GET.
actally i wanted to participate in tekken tournaments.but what i've come to know is that in these tournaments(LIKE EVOLOTION,ABSOLUTION ETC) marco buttons like L1,L2,R2,R1 (SPECIAL COMMAND BUTTONS) are not allowed.now i am playing
with them for almost 7 years.but as i wanted to play in tournaments i stopped using them and practised playing without them.i've been doing practice for almost a year now without much success.SO I WANTED SOME TIPS AND TRICKS IN USING BUTTON COMBINATIONS (FOR EXAMPLE TRINGLE PLUS SQUARE).out of 10 times i might exucate these commands(triangle + square,circle + cross) maximumm of 3 times.and the command for throw(triangle + circle) just 1 time. THE TIMING FOR PRESSING THESE BUTTON COMBINATIONS IS JUST NOT THERE DESPITE A LOT OF PRACTICE,I ALWAYS MISS OUT OF THEM. now i am wondering how can i participate in tournaments with this problem of mine(I WONDER WHY TOURNAMENTS ORGANISERS HAVE THIS RULE AS IT LIMITS THE GAME.SOMETING WHICH IS IN THE GAME SYSTEM MUST BE USED AS ONLY THEN THE GAME CAN BE PLAYED AT ITS FULLEST.THIS RULE ALSO TAKES AWAY THE GLAMOUR FROM THE GAME.SO THIS RULE MUST BE WITHDRAWN). I HOPE YOU HELP ME . I WOULD BE EAGERLY AWAITING YOUR TIPS AND TRICKS IN USING BUTTON COMBINATIONS WITHOUT L1,L2,R1,R2 COMMANDS. PLEASE DO HELP ME OUT.I AM WAITING FOR YOUR REPLY.

     I haven't come up with a response yet but rest assure that it will probably be just as inane as my last letter. And like before you guys will see it as well...

     So I don't know why this came to mind just now, but I thought of a hilarious virus to make for computers...What the computer would do is when infected is every time you emptied your "recycle bin" on your computer the machine would print out some garbage on your printer and a box would pop up telling you take your deleted file and throw it away. OK, maybe it's not that funny. I just think it really be hilarious if you got a computer illiterate person believing you had to physically throw away the file.

     I don't know if you think that's funny but I think it's hilarious right now. That maybe because I'm tired and giddy right now. I should get some sleep here soon.

     It almost slipped my mind that I haven't talked about Thunder last weekend. I don't think I really have much to say though. It was great as expected. Jon, Ted, and I brought back the movie Trio that weekend for a really balanced two-for-one(pay for one movie and see 2) at Great Escape 16; One was really really great and the other was really really crappy. To it's credit though The Punisher wasn't that bad. The last 30 minutes were pretty enjoyable and what I expected a movie about the Punisher to be. Unfortunately the entire rest of the movie was really bad...and really slow.

     The rest of the week went great up until the end. The end kind of sucked. Like usual I ended up drinking a bit too much and I felt crappy for a while. That ended Saturday and it bled into Sunday. It didn't bleed into the new week, but it definitely altered my disposition through the week so far. A few things are going through my mind about what I want out of life right now. I wish I had the answers on them but I don't. This is what I'll meditate on as I go to rest now. Farewell...

 


Thursday April 15th, 2004:

Random thoughts here and there

     My head is fucking killing me. It's that damn eye problem again. It's so damn weird. It's like my right eye is fine but my left eye is having trouble coordinate it's vision along side my left one. I don't think I'll have time over the weekend to get it looked into; I have more urgent matters to attend to: job interview, thunder, some GCBC DVD related stuff, and getting my tags renewed.

     That reminds me, our county is fucking bullshit. There's only 4 fucking counties in Indiana where you have to get an emissions test for your car every 2 years for car tags. Clark county happens to be one of them. I get a call from my mom a week ago telling me that I got a notice in the mail that my tags need to be renewed. The problem is my car is up here and the testing place is down there. There are some counties up in northern Indiana that require emissions testing as well but they're still about an hour and a half away from me. So I just caved and decided to to drive back home this weekend to get testing done since I would have needed my car there anyway. It sucks but there's I can do...with the exception of saying that Clark county is bullshit of course...at least I do get to go home tonight instead of Friday or something.

     Not so random link of the day: Super Mario Reloaded(click "Watch this Movie")

     Oh well...on to something a tad less mundane. Two nights earlier I saw 28 Days Later, about 2 years later from when it came out. It was well received by me. Ironically I think the most scary thing about the movie is not the end of civilization, or the zombies(which I found quite hilarious at times), but rather some of the scary things that just the normal people do. The evil that people have a capacity for is the most frightening thing of all. Especially when you consider every day in real life some one is killed, raped, or hurt intentional in some way by another person.

     The other day I was sitting in bed thinking. I was thinking about morality, choices, and why do we do what we decide to do. I believe a big portion of moral choices are fighting back natural tendencies we have as animals with the natural logic we create as people. How strong we are at fighting back at what drives our ids is relative to each person, some more and some less. I was thinking what if someone wasn't strong enough to fight back their id. Does that make them guilty? I don't think it does. Though in my mind it does classify the person the same as a wild animal. In my schema of the word "human" there definitely has to be a capacity to control one's desires through thought.

     Thinking about this more, I believe there's 3 classes of beings that I treat with respect. The first being people for whom I use the good ol' policy of the Golden Rule & the idea of karma. By that I mean: I treat people the way I would like to be treated up until the point they show me that they wish to be treated some way different than I would like to be treat. The 3rd class, which I lay out before the 2nd for simplicity sake, is basically any inanimate or non feeling object. Like most people, I don't really have a moral scope for treating objects being that they're just objects with no thoughts or feelings. Finally, my last class falls between the 1st and 2nd: any feeling feeling creature without logic. I guess that covers pretty much almost any types of animals. I treat this class with respect because, like me, they feel pain, but since they can't be reasoned with I have to treat them differently than a person.

     Of course there's that fuzzy layer that blurs what category someone/something is in. Like a lot of people I'd imagine could believe that a sever mentally handicapped person could be classified as the 2nd category. But I don't think in reality it really works out like that. At least every mentally handicapped person I've ever seen has humanity in them; they know what's right and wrong. And even though they might not be able to explain it or reason it out in words, the essence of makes them human is still there.

     At least that's the way it works out in my mind....

     Oh yeah, one final note...I repeat...be at the Riverhouse for Thunder.


Sunday April 11th, 2004:

All my answers lie in a bottom of a cup...

     So ends this weekend of Easter. It came...and went. It was all rather non-exciting. I'm rather surprised at the people that go home for Easter here at Purdue. I guess it's because my family hasn't done any Easter related activities in forever. In fact my family hasn't done anything religious in well...a long time. I'm excluding Christmas of course because it's a well known fact that Christmas for a long time has been assimilated into America's consumer culture for the past 100+ years.

     It's pretty funny considering what has happened. At one time my mom wanted to be "more religious" and put my sister and I through catholic school. My dad grew up in a some what religious background. I guess this as my grandma is very into religion. Also, we're technically catholic(technically being there because we really haven't practiced anything in a long time). That surprises me because Catholicism seems like it's the more hard-core of the various branches of Christianities.

     Well whatever. I don't really have that much need for religion. The only thing that interests me about religion is the philosophy part of it. I don't really buy into any stories about why we're here and what will happen to us. To me, those are just nice stories to exemplify the philosophy aspect. Whether or not there is a god, that's questionable I could go either way on that question. All I'm saying is I have better reasons to be a good person other than to appease some being that I can't see.

 

     Speaking of can't see. I can't do that very well at this moment. For the past week I've had trouble focusing my eyes. I blaming it on the fact that I stare at computer too much. The problem seems to only really come up a lot while I'm looking at a very close object like a computer. On further observation I realize the problem seems to come from my left eye. My left eye is the dominate one. If I close it my vision becomes a bit fuzzier. If I close my right eye when I'm having troubles focusing I realize that my left eye's vision is clear but things spin a little. It's almost like I am drunk in that eye. What that means I don't know. Hopefully I'll be able to figure something out...

What I do have figured out

     ...is how to make money. I worked again over the weekend in Kokomo. $20/hour...the job was suppose to be from 9 am - 10 pm. Yeah, it was bit much. It didn't go off like that though. First off all if you told the engineers up there to give you the definition of "coordination" they'd might come back to you in an hour with it. That's assuming they could all told each other what part of the dictionary they were going to try to look for it. I base this on the fact that in reality I was suppose to be there at 2pm on both Sat & Sun. But hey, that's cool I still get paid either way....at the end of the weekend I got paid $20/hour to do the following:

Learn how to drive a stick shift in a truck

talk to a couple people on the phone

listening to a few movie soundtracks

watched the movie Office Space

and turn an ignition key multiple times. Somewhere in there lied my real job. I would try to find it myself, but I got lost. I'll leave it to you.

 

     I think I'll keep it short for now. If this is my last post before the weekend. Make sure you're ass is at the Riverhouse for Thunder Over Louisville.


Monday April 5th, 2004:

Streching for Answers

     It's 7:52 pm. It's officially boxwine monday. Before I head over to the Craig's place I decided to throw a few words down. I'm not doing my CS project, well the majority of it anyway. Thus, I'm feeling a bit obligated to be a bit productive somewhere else. Hence you're reading this. Work was...uh...um...err...let's just say soul crushing, that seems applicable. With that bad taste still in my mouth you can see why I don't want to sit in front of a computer much longer.

I came to the conclusion that I wasn't going to do my homework after applying the formula:

Midterm Grade 126/110 = 1.11 * 30% = 33.55%

Current Homework Grade = 289/375 = .771 * 40% = 30.8%

Potential Homework Grade = 394/480 to 289/480 = .821 * 40% to .602 * 40% = 32.8 to 24.08

Final grade need to get a C(i.e. the only thing I really care about this point):

33.55+32.84 to 24.08 = 70 - 66.39 to 57.63 = 3.61 to 12.37% / 30% (final) = 12.0 to 41.2%

 

So as long as I get a 12 to 42 percent on the final I'll be fine. Thus I don't complete my homework assignment and instead enjoy my life because I'm sure as hell ain't enjoying it at work. Haha! Onto boxwine monday!


Sunday April 4th, 2004:

The Trouble with Wanting Something So Much is the Fear of Losing It

     It's been a long time since we were last with our hero. In our last chapter we had discovered that he'd found another goal for the next year. As the glimmering future was rising on the horizon he'd forgotten to notice the stormy skies that tower above his head. What foul weather would hinder him? That is a more complicated matter to figure out.

     Getting back to my own state of mind, there is not one thing specific bothering right now. It could just be that I'm tired, I'm lonely, or sad for the sake of being sad. It might just be the fact that I shouldn't have drank as much as I did last night. I don't know. I don't feel really happy right now that's the bottomline right now. *ahem* Most like I'm going to pass out in an hour or so here. I'll throw some words around in this HTML file and I'll leave to you, the passive impartial reader to make judge on what this shit means.

Topic I: I've Got Thoughts of Unrest

     The weekend went pretty well. I don't know if was thrown in here early but I went back home for the weekend. It was a mix of business, pleasure, peppered with a bit of cynicism, and marinated just for just a bit in melancholy. Here are the adventures that followed.

     Friday I ended up going to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Ted and Ben. Looking aside the unwieldy title name, I saw on my ticket it said "Eternal Sunshin" It sounded like a kung fu movie. A kung fu movie it was not however. I will not say much more than this: It was a really great surreal movie, which is probably one the reasons I liked it so much. I highly recommend it.

     After the party I ended up going to Ted's place to get some important work done for the Good Cop, Bad Cop DVD. Ted and I were wanting to do the commentary for the DVD tonight. I had brought in my VHS copy of the movie that we could use while we recorded with the camera. But alas Mr. Paine wouldn't hear one word of this commentary idea. Though I'm pretty sure he will do it eventually, he just wasn't up for it tonight. Instead of commentary, I went back to Ted's to get the last bits source video I needed for the bonus disc. The wheel grinds on with that...

     Saturday I was around the house for a while working on the aforementioned source video. Will stopped by at some point to(successfully) convince me to see Hellboy with him. I talked to my mom for a bit about taxes. I started to tell her that you don't have to pay them. I should clarify: I was spouting off all the stuff that Alex told me about the Federal Reserve owning the U.S Government and how taxes are illegal(constitutionally). Whether this is all true or not I have no clue since I don't know Alex's sources. I was just saying it for the hell of it.

     My mom then told me how one of her one her friends didn't file taxes for 6 years and it destroyed her credit. I then retorted with "credit is overrated." If you think about it, the only thing "having good credit" means is you get the opportunity to keep paying your creditors money for really large items. Um...sounds like fun. I decided one day I'm going to use all this credit I have to buy a shit load of stuff then disappear into the night.

     Later on that day I got into another discussion with my mom about insurance being bullshit. Not so much the concept. It's just bullshit that you must have car insurance to drive. I think no one should have car insurance. I think that if people knew that if getting into a wreck would mean losing their car for good they'd drive much more carefully. At least that's my thoughts anyway...

     Later on that day would follow into the night. That night would bring the party at Byron & Nate's place. It was a lot of fun. I drank a bit more than I think I should have though. This indicated by the fact that I was feeling a bit depressed at the end of the night. On arriving home I didn't sleep that much better. Waking into the next day brought me back a little but this entire day I've felt a bit down.

Topic II: I'll show you how I solved the Test

     Uh...where was I? Oh yeah, the drive home. The drive home was un fun. A lot of things were going through my mind on the way back home. I though about how cruddy I felt. I thought about how I really have thought about love in a really long time. I thought about how I just didn't feel like much matter at the moment I was in. My mind was just picking up random thoughts and ideas and throwing them down as soon as some coherence began to take hold.

     I eventually got onto a series of thoughts about the status of me driving on the highway. I realized that there were 3 types of drivers.

     The first class were the ones who drove about the speed limit. They were almost always in the passing lane and most of the time they were trucks or other large vehicles. They would use the passing lane very little.

     The second class of drivers were those ones who'd drive a bit over the speed limit but only at their comfort point. They'd stay in one lane for the entire time save for a few instances of being caught behind really slow people. Many times they would stay in the passing lane even when there were people behind them obviously wanting to go faster.

     The last class was the ones who would drive as fast as safety permitted. They'd switch lanes back and forth when it was useful for them and other drivers(i.e. to let faster cars to pass them or to pass slower cars).

     Arriving back at home I found myself pretty worn out. I came home yet again to an empty apartment. Figuring that if I stayed my sadness would continue, I decided to head over to my former apartment yet again to hang out with Craig and the gang. Much fun ensued I assure you. Fast forward to a couple of hours and you'll find me here sitting in my room. The sound of the Tekken 2 soundtrack and a laptop monitor is the only signs of life filling the room. My eyes are weakening. It's signs of weariness. With this telling sign I should end my chronicles here. I shall return once again later to give you more adventures. Farewell....


Tuesday March 30th, 2004:

*Meditative silence*

     So I found myself back at home for the weekend yet again. I was down for Craig's birthday. His girl Steph wanted us, his friends, surprised him by showing up in Warsaw, KY. Most enjoyable it was. I was supposed to go to a big party at Purdue this weekend, but I suppose the 2 parties I was at and the great friends I met up with this weekend made it better than one party.

     I don't really look forward to going back to Purdue in a couple of hours, but it has to be done. I keep telling myself just 6 more weeks and I'll be done for good. The only thing I'll have to return to West Lafayette for is my diploma this summer. What happens next is up to me. I think I've mentioned that my first concern is not finding a career with my major. I mean I do plan on using my degree to find some sort of better job, but I do not plan on making it my life.

     I come to terms with the fact that computers are not how I want to define my life. They let you do a lot of cool things but that's all I care about. This is probably why I've began to hate being West Lafayette this last month; It feels like my life around there is pushing me in every direction except the one I really want to take.

     ...Whatever. Fuck this. I want to talk about something more interesting.

Great Announcements

     I've 2 great announcements regarding recent work I've been doing. The first is that the SBB DVD 2.0 is now completed. Not only will you get 4 years worth of all the SBB movies, you will also get the entire website along with other bonus movies.

     The second is that Skitzowolf will indeed be on the GCBC DVD. After long and hard negotiations with Wormina Films, Ted and I managed to get the rights to the movie. Aside from that much progress hasn't really been made much on the DVD. Ted's camera is still broken but he now has a few options toward obtaining a new that will let us finish the DVD. I would explore those options in detail with you but they aren't really worth talking that much about. Basically for your sake and mine let's hope Ted gets his ass in gear soon.

Moving On

     The goal for this week is to start on one of my CS assignments and finish another. With these done, I'm going to head home this weekend yet again. Why you ask? Parties. One Melissa Chang invited me last week to a part back at home. I don't really have much of a reason to go back home than that, but it will much more fun than the time I'm spending here. Plus I might try to get some DVD work done while I'm there. I've been kicking mo ass in my classes(90%+ averages on assignments and a 113% on a midterm) so I figure it's about damn time for (another) break.

     And while I'm talking about "moving on" I think I might have a plan for the rest of this year:

1. Get job for the summer.
2. Take classes over the summer at IUS.
3. Make a ton of money to pay off debts.
4. Goto Purdue to get my diploma.
5. Get an apartment in Bloomington with Sam.

     So you're probably asking me what's the deal with #5. Going to Bloomington? I'm going back to school? Not quite. You see it's pretty likely that Sam is going to IU for graduate school. Last night he asked me if I wanted to get an apartment with him. I think it's a great opportunity.

     I've always talked about how I'd love to live in a college town with out the hassle of bullshit classes. I'm probably going to make enough over the summer to where I can pay off my debt and have a good bit of savings. That would get me started off up there until I could find some other line of work.

     Who knows it maybe even CS related? Not that I care to get a job like that. Even if I can't find that kind of job I could always get some sort of pizza delivery job or some other job that pays a lot in tips. I could make a nice bit of cash that way since there's all kinds of rich kids in college towns. It's not certain whether this will happen though; It depends on my financial situation at the end of the summer & whether Sam actually goes to IU( it's very likely but not definite). But if it does happen, I'm going to look forward to the rest of the year very much.


Tuesday March 23rd, 2004:

The Spring Unwound

     I returned to a West Lafayette a bit more refreshed and relaxed. I found myself now pounding away at my old, but rather modern, laptop. It's been a good break. I've gotten accomplished most of the stuff I wanted to do:

Job: I've might of found a job as welder of all of things. Yeah, I know I've never welded before. But I'm still not going to let that stop me. Especially when they will provide the training. Or so I am told. I heard about this job through my aunt, who works at ACBL, and through my mom who found out the details. I'm going to get a hold of the hiring guy tomorrow to see all the details. The pay is just at my bottom expecting pay, but that's ok. Money isn't so important as the fact that I won't be in front of a computer for 8 hours of day. So not only will I'll be able to use my whole body a bit more, I'll be able to pay off my debt, and learn some new skill. Not that really care so much about doing welding, but I'm always up for trying some different type of job.

Friends and Family: I got to see most everyone that I wanted to see over the break. There were a few people I didn't get to see but hopefully that will be remedied come the weekend of Thunder Over Louisville.

DVD Work: The SBB DVD-ROM is almost completed. I only need 3 more profiles: Lee Barnes, Eric Deason, and George Foster. I told Lee to get them(as he knows both the other 2 guys well) awhile back. Hopefully Lee will be online again pretty soon so I can get the those last ones from him.

     As far as the GCBC DVD, I didn't get to my deadline of finishing the Bonus Disc. Because of Ted's camera breaking I can't get the last few bits I need. Hopefully, he'll get his ass into gear and find some way to get the camera fixed(or find another DV camera with a Firewire port to use temporarily). I've suggested that he should really get a job to pay for the repairs or even a new camera. Whether that really happens or not, who know?. Getting Ted motivated to do anything is an exercise in frustration to say the least.

     Other than that things are going well with the DVD. I've fixed some minor spelling and other errors with the case and the bonus disc. I've done a test burn of the disc and I've ironed out most of the problems I've had. The only other problem I might also have is that not all DVD players will work well with this DVD. So far, from my testing, I've seen that some players handle burned DVDs(i.e. not professional stamped) worse than others. Hopefully it won't be a huge issue but it's just like with old CD players and burned CD's; The newer your player is the better it seems to handle burned discs. Thus, it's out of my hands.

 

     Like month old bread in a cabinet, I think many of my topics have been stale lately. Work, school, DVD talk. It's all been a brutal cycle of boring topics. Honestly I can't tell since I'm not a reader of my own writings, but if I was I imagine I would get sick of hearing about these topics. It seems as much as I don't want to stay on these topics, I can't help it. That's all my mind has been focused on lately. It's a routine that I've loathed over the past month(excluding spring break).

     I was thinking about my routine last night. I've heard from a lot of people that as you get older time seems to go faster. The time you feel you have seems to go by quicker. I came to the conclusion last night that this might because that as we get older we seem to slip into further into a rigid routine. Since one day seems like the next, the mind starts to filter out all the same mundane routines. That combined with the fact that your memory becomes weaker as you grow older sets up a condition where the last moments in the present you can remember are much older time-wise than those last moments you could remember 10 years. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's just a small theory I have right now.

Regardless of these facts, hope that come the end of my school career is a bringer of more interesting topics than how bullshit my last exam was. I look forward to a few months from now when I don't have this pressure of school or work hanging over my head. With all this in mind, I think I'm going to take my leave to meditate on other issues. Farewell peoples...

Oh yeah here's one last thing before I go. Tah Tah.


Monday March 15th, 2004:

Little time for Words

     Well one of my missions for the week has been accomplished. I've just applied to go to IUS this summer. I should be able to sign up pretty soon and finally finish this damn college thing. As far as my goal of seeing everyone this summer that's going pretty well so far; I've probably seen about half of all the people I had in mind. There's been much fun times going on and it's only Monday. So far so good. Looking for a job so far hasn't been initiated but I've got some good places to start. So that's going better than I thought as well.

The only thing that hasn't gone well is work on the GCBC DVD. Ted hit a little technical difficulties. I guess you would make that one technical difficulty. And it's not so much difficult as it is a dead stop(i.e. his camera broke). It sucks but there's nothing that can be done at this point. Hopefully, the camera that Ted let Steve borrow is still at Steve's apartment so that can be used. If not, there's still a good number of things that can be done.

Time for one last topic. There's been a sharp pain in my head ever since I woke up this morning. I'm going to see a doctor about it tomorrow. Hopefully it isn't serious. We'll see though. That's about all I've got now. If you're in town and you want to see me, call god damn it! Laters people.


Tuesday March 9th, 2004:

Sometime to kill

     The events of this week are irrelevant. Well, save for one, I'm going to be back home on Friday. After 2 months of crappy tests, projects, and work I get to go on back to the place I call home. I'll probably be back in around 8:30 p.m. for those interested in calling me then. The more I think about it, the more I really like to call it my home. Compared with all the other places I've been over the state, it's much more enjoyably.

     West Lafayette sucks as a town. Outside school events the culture life is non existence. Trailer parks, suburbs, strip malls, industrial/research building, and the Purdue campus(which might as well be the previous item) are what makes up this place. It's rather ironic that Purdue, a school that has one the highest populations of foreign students, is rather devoid of culture. Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe there is a huge sense of town culture around here. If there is, I haven't seen it. The only social culture I've seen around here are the bars.

     Of course there are worse places to live in Indiana. There's always Kokomo Indiana. What's so bad about Kokomo? The city is one commercial strip with houses surrounding it and the Delphi and Chevrolet plants at the end of the commercial strip. Other than that, there is absolutely nothing in the city. The entire city exists to support the Delphi/Chevrolet plants. Pretty scary if you ask me. Thinking about makes the Louisville metro area a great place to live.

     In fact when I think about it, it's really a great place to live. I used to always thought where I lived sucked because there's not much to do in Jeffersonville. But as I've gotten older I've gotten to appreciate all the little and varied places around the region. You've have the boring suburbs of Jeffersonville, Clarksville, and New Albany; the far-out little towns like Sellersburg; the tiny downtown areas of Jeff and New Albany; the large downtown areas of Louisville; Old Louisville; Bardstown Road; and Waterfront park. And another great thing about the Louisville area is that it has all of the benefits of a large city with out any of the down sides. It's a nice in-between.

     Even then this places are nothing with out people. In the end, fun is where you find it. You can enjoy any region you live in depending on what's you're thing. The only difference the location can provide is a different type of people who make up that local culture. Maybe I like the Louisville area more nowadays just I know more people nowadays. I'm not sure. Maybe it's a combination of things. The more I think about it though the more I feel like I want to make Louisville my real home.


Saturday March 6th, 2004:

Here I am again

     I'm still in the same place and for your purposes I might as well have been the same time. Nothing is different from when the last time I was here. There are some slight changes but they're really not worth know. I'm sure you guys don't care about my computer, my bank accounts, my car, my job, my school work, and so on. You all have those yourself and I know those aren't interesting else I'd be hearing about it. Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't in the end I don't think it matters.

     Lately I've had this bad feeling lately. It's the feeling that everyone is caught up in their own lives. I'm saying "caught up" in the sense that they're concerned with trite little thing; what they're going to do in an hour; when are they going to get their work done; what are they going to have for dinner; and so forth. I feel that they're so caught up in them that(think) they don't have time for other distractions, events, or people. Maybe it's just me that feels that way I don't know.

     Whichever perspective you want to take I still feel that people need to evaluate their life and see how much time they're spending on things. Ideally I think a balance of time spend in various area would be perfect. Of course that's not what happens. For one reason or another we usually spend a disproportional amount of time on one thing. Or at least that's my theory. For me it's been sitting at a fucking computer. The things is I have 3 big things going on in my life right now: work, school, and getting the SBB and GCBC DVD's done. All of which(with exception of some stuff related to school), require me at a computer. It sucks a lot.

     I've made a mental note to myself for this summer. I'm going to seriously curb the amount of time I spend on the computer. That is with the exception of work on the GCBC DVD(the SBB DVD should be done by summer). And hopefully that will be done early summer so I can forget about it soon. After that I'm going to take the time to find something else to focus my energies on. What that is I am not certain.

Ok, that's all I've got for today. Later bitches!


Wednesday March 3rd, 2004:

Where to begin?

     To begin, well...there is no beginning. There's right now and that's about it. It's me, the computer, and I guess this room. It feels a bit unconfortably warm. It's either me or the room. It's probably the room. Maybe both...I keep wondering about where I'll be in a half a year or year but I'm not sure. I don't feel very good where I'm at right now. I'm stressed about finding a career, work, school, the DVD, and other things. Things will probably be better in a few weeks I hope.

I'll get off this subject and move to something better. Something better being free fucking pizza. As I was informed by some of my coworkers there's a CS seminar every week that gives away free pizza. It's @ 5 on Wednesday. But there's a problem, work you see. The damn things seems to coincide with one another. I was arguing the cost of pizza over making $8/hr(after taxes). How will I ever remedy this dilemma Stay tuned to find out!


Friday February 27th, 2004:

Falling Apart

     I fear my health hasn't been doing so well lately. Well, actually I'm not sure what it is. My arms and legs(more so my arms lately) have been cramping a lot. I think it feels like a blood flow thing. It's like the blood is struggling to get through my arms. The other day I noticed that I could see my vein pulse in my hand. Aside from that, I can feel my arms hurt whenever they're in the typing position. I think I'm going to go see the doctor about it over spring break.

     It's probably the stress that's doing it. I'm on a computer the majority of the day with work and school. It sucks and I think it's getting to me. I looked in the mirror the other day and I saw my eyes had dark rings under them. I think it's from staring at a monitor for a prolonged period of time. It's a good thing there's only a 2 months or so left. I don't think I can keep this up. I've been trying to do some breathing exercises to relax and calm my body down. It's worked to a point, but a soon as I get to something else I have to do my body feels stressed out again. I'm going to watch myself in these next few weeks lest I'll burn myself out.

*jump topic*

     On my way walking to classes I was thinking about a word, or term rather, that I'm not sure exists. Its a term to describe the duality of a object, it's action, and it jumping between both forms. It's the term that would describe a verb in it's noun form(the infinitive) and it's used form(a conjugated verb). It's a term that could describe making a noun into a verb(e.g. I control-alt-delete you). It's the term that describes how you can think of electromagnetic radiation as a particle or a wave. I'm sure it's out there and someone as labeled it. But I don't know what it is.

Looking to the past

     My last post topic about my theory about my style of writing inspired me to see the entire picture. The entire picture being what I've written over the past 6 years. So with some scripting knowledge and some use of Excel, I took all the stuff I've written over the past 6 years and submitted it to the Gender Genie and then processed it. My results I've compiled here.

I've decided to call my female score to male score ratio the "Emo index." I called it that because it was the point where I think that my writing became so sappy, angst filled, meloncholy, that my style registered as more female to the Gender Genie. I'm running on the assumption that the algorithm takes more "emotional" sounding words and ranks that more female. Thus anyone that's very emotional sounding is going to show up more as female. Next to the scores I've put major events and topics listed in the text. I think they've provide a context to why I've ranked the way I did. I provide more analysis down below.

The Shawn Conn Emo index 1998-2004
{C}{C}{C}{C}
Date
Words
Female Score
Male Score
Emo Index
Major Events(Topics Mentioned in Text)
Jul-98
4886
8901
10090
0.88
Hired and laid off from work, bitched about work, hung out with Alex and Len over the summer.
Sep-98
3039
5254
7190
0.73
Stared college at IUS, analyzed the state of life a lot, hanging with Alex.
Oct-98
1654
2363
3260
0.72
Analyzed my life through high school, my current state of mind, and daily events.
Nov-98
2166
5643
4369
1.29
Bitched about girlfriends and my feelings about life.
Personal Journal
1999
 
Jan-99
1065
2440
2406
1.01
Daily events, computer stuff, 2nd semester at IUS, deciding to go to IU , the daily grind.
May-99
3588
5849
5737
1.02
Being more social, Thunder '99, the keg I brought to Shelley's party, AIM conversations, a crush on Shelley yoder, and daily events.
Jul-99
10165
20056
20115
1.00
(My) first Riverhouse party, meeting Steve, meeting the "other Emily", daily events, working at the Insurance place, 8th Street house party, Alex and I driving the wrong away on Spring St, getting very depressed/angry at the last party, etc.
Aug-99
11077
20696
22452
0.92
Len and I hanging out with Emily, the last great party of 99', a lot of silly drama, BS at work, hanging out with various new people, being depressed, my first semester at IU, an email from Emily, partying at IU.
Sep-99
9911
18763
20117
0.93
Stuff learned from my social psych. class, emails from people, getting around IU, more in-depth introspection.
Oct-99
2501
4877
5218
0.93
Daily grind, not finding a crowd I really want to hang out with, doing well in classes, deciding if Purdue is better for a CS major, 31337 h8x0r1ng, FF8, depression about not fitting in.
Nov-99
5979
11163
10138
1.10
Heavy drinking, being confused about the future and classes, hanging out with various people, smoking pot for the first time, being bitter about the world, Thanksgiving Break.
Dec-99
1642
4277
2270
1.88
Hanging out with Steve, various games, deciding to go to Purdue, the Steve 2K party.
Personal Journal
2000
 
Jan-00
3387
6110
6094
1.00
Hanging out much back at home, more class grind, deep look at what communication between 2 people are.
Mar-00
4878
9656
9768
0.99
Hanging out with random girls, stuff learned from class, interesting work in computer architecture, Grandfather Mongomery's Funeral, Craig B-Day party, meeting Will for the first time, changing who I want to be as a person.
Apr-00
2264
4466
4933
0.91
Discussions with mom, metaphysical discussions, daily grind, personality problems, applying to Purdue, returning to Jeff, hanging at Steve's apartment, hanging out with Claire.
May-00
3985
8615
7190
1.20
Hanging out at Steve's, Ted's 21st B-day party, hanging out with the stoner group much more, Cable modem, working at the census bureau, much drama between the group and I,
Jul-00
1923
3239
3793
0.85
Getting laid off, SBB, people hanging out my house much, the idea for the SBB website, car impounded, hanging out with Will more, beginning of big depression, parties, Kyle 4th Extravaganza party, not going to Purdue that semester,
Dec-00
1843
4165
4282
0.97
Being more depressed, implosion, finishing the SBB site, daily events, confusion about who I am,
Personal Journal
2001
 
Jan-01
965
2132
1447
1.47
First semester at Purdue, getting around Purdue, looking into seeing a doctor about depression....abrupt end of journal.
Who Is...(Blog version)
2002
 
Jan-02
7281
13801
13453
1.03
Began blog of my thoughts, focused toward more of an audience in my writing, my progress of skill in Tekken, various blurbs, the daily grind, the MG series, various drunk posts.
Feb-02
10182
20126
19770
1.02
Being very busy, classes, various musings, various stories when I was at home, links, not being happy.
Mar-02
7486
14781
15337
0.96
Various stories from home, bitching about classes, talking about not being negative and depressed, defense of video games, relationships, fixing PC's, games to buy, and a choose your own adventure in the life of Shawn Conn.
Apr-02
10094
18436
19443
0.95
The rundown of my compiler project, more bitching, various daily topics, dreams, MP3s, hating school, upgrading my PC, Why I chose CS, various blogs, another choose your own adventure, looking forward to the summer.
May-02
13581
23929
26248
0.91
Tekken, grades, perceptions about life, women, questioning reality, "Dear Frank", dying, distortion between movies and reality, crappiness of service jobs, cynical views at life, daily events, end of my "Junior" year.
Jun-02
29087
42395
59756
0.71
Daily events, who or what we are, The Bus Trip.
Jul-02
7511
15226
12329
1.23
Feeling distanced between my friends, daily events, various links, discussing suicide, more about depression, being inspired, various trivia, feeling ill about life.
Aug-02
8162
15810
15637
1.01
The end of the summer, beating myself up(with words), motivation for life, classes for next semester, dreams, BMI, drunken craziness at bars, living with Newt/Craig/Jaime in the apt, cemetery man.
Sep-02
12122
20039
25406
0.79
9/11, Newt hating AIM, transcending pain, Tae Kwon Do, Tekken 4, daily events, meeting Katie for the first time, sleeping lots, trying to feel better about my health, changing my diet, loosing my fear of death, Tekken series.
Oct-02
12684
24508
25723
0.95
Classes, stupid people at the apartment building, more Tekken, social dynamics, dreams, various rambling, eating habits, rant on copyright, being busy, classes, the Internet, stupid things about AIM, Halloween.
Nov-02
2870
5719
4784
1.20
GTA3, various rambling, various events over the break,
Dec-02
9182
15337
18727
0.82
Drinking, stupid classes, lamenting the whole blog thing, Tekken, funny story about our 2nd phone line, Christmas break: friends, family, events, and fun, New Year's, dreams, not caring about the new year.
Who Is...(Resurrection)
2003
 
Jan-03
11088
18482
21139
0.87
Discussion of alignment in D&D, needing villains in the world, various daily events, wanting to be loved, dreams, classes, being depressed at a party, past recollection on my life, mom giving me pot, antiwar against drugs rant, the end of my blog site.
Mar-03
8134
11680
18797
0.62
The return of my own website and a new goal for the site, Computer Science and AI, video games, the state of unhappiness, solving personal problems, spring break, deciding to what to do with your life, Acts, plans for the summer.
Apr-03
5965
8631
13206
0.65
Sim City, classes, stupid work story, war, body health, confidence, the human body, Claire's death, WalMart screws me over.
May-03
5219
7683
12599
0.61
A new type of insult, friendship, GCBC2, movies with inspiration, Xenosaga, Matrix Reloaded defense.
Jun-03
6341
8999
14503
0.62
Video gaming, what's new in life, some daily events, the word "burn", Cancer Cash, AI, SBB, Demo job, Ringu review, new computer, various musing.
Jul-03
6500
9369
14064
0.67
Fun over the summer, various reviewing, rant on DOA volleyball, various events, personal possessions
Aug-03
8683
14215
19222
0.74
Various events, Max Payne, the Love calculator, review of DMC2, laughter, GCBC2, Tekken JF moves, rant about my sister, dumb trailers, people who make too much money.
Sep-03
15081
20536
33042
0.62
Parties, Frank Klepacki, people selling out, defense against video games getting easy, rant on stupid people, rants about various groups, Steve party, 1000 TTT survival, rant about LJ's, VH1 shows, movie reviews, links,
Oct-03
5005
7805
10989
0.71
Brian Young, rant about being fired, daily events, school, review of C&C Renegade, alcohol 120, changes in my life.
Nov-03
8784
14425
20118
0.72
The Raven DVD, SC2 soundtrack, philosophy on good health, GCBC2 script, the bus trip, bashing Matrix Revolutions, talking to a reporter about SBB, the proliferation of media tools, computer review, classes, thanksgiving break.
Dec-03
6240
7727
14079
0.55
Fight Club, being sick, various events, being relevant, the end of classes, inner peace, the bus trip, Max Payne 2 review.
 
 
 
Jan-04
4759
7557
10712
0.71
Bus Trip, GCBC DVD, SBB DVD, classes, various events, Mozilla, transcending.
Feb-04
6540
11696
12831
0.91
Work, daily events, funny emails, being too busy, school, feeling better about a job, ID, being depressed a little, stressed out.
 
 
 
Total
305499
527577
622783
0.85
 

     If you look over the data it's pretty easy to see where the patterns emerge. When I'm talking about regular events it doesn't seem to change my "emo" rating. It's only when I mention stuff like girlfriends, drama, drinking, crying, being depressed, and so on that my index jumps up past the critical 1.00 mark. Of course there's a few anomalous results in there where it doesn't follow that pattern. I chalk that up to lack of entries during certain time periods which makes the samples not as accurate.

     If you look you see over time that my emo index is marked by a number of spikes. This I presume are due to the events going on at that time: certain key events which make me write in a very emotional way. If you notice over time it has been dropping much. Most significant is that none of my months after doing the revamped "Who Is the Man With the Name that Rhymes?" has registered with an emo index of over 1. I think this is due to the change in mission for this website(as opposed to my journal or blog). There is a recent upward trend however. Probably due to the fact that I'm tired of school and class, and a slight feeling of loneliness.

     Maybe that's a sign to change my life. Maybe it's a sign that my life has become bland and sterile. Or maybe I'm just thinking too much about such a dumb topic. My money is on the last one. We'll see how things turn out over the next few months. Right now though, I'm sick of looking at a computer screen. I'll see you guys later...


 

Tuesday February 24th, 2004:

Aaaah, ha, ha, aha, haaaaa...

     The scraps of stories flow along with the daily winds of time today. I've got news here and there to talk about. Not anything more interesting that. I'll try to make it sound interesting though. But first, a foreword: I didn't really intend to post anything tonight. Tonight actually I wanted to tackle my homework for CS314. It's a class I had already took(like another class), but I needed to boost my GPA past that 3.0 mark that I fell behind last semester.

     But enough about the past, I was looking at the homework assignment and there was something oddly familiar about it. A little too familiar...I ramble through the patch work of stuff that is my room. I find my old folder from CS314 last semester. I search through the folder and what do I find? The exact copy of the assignment verbatim with the exception of the date listed on it. Behind that paper? The solutions. The battle was over before I knew it had begun. I was victorious. With these answers in hand I was a mere copy and paste(albeit a manual copy and paste) away from a 100% homework grade. Huzzah...Lesson learned here are professors are just as lazy as their students.

 

     So now I'm here talking, um, typing to you. Yeah I know, pretty special huh? I'm trying to thing where to begin. Um let me think...Well I guess all start with the one subject that has engulfed my life for a month or so: The GCBC DVD. The bonus disc is about finished. All that really needs to be finished is the animations for the menus. That I can not do until Ted supplies be some sound effects and some pictures.

     I've been trying to set deadlines for certain parts of this DVD. The goal is to get the bonus disc done by spring break(less than 3 weeks now). That shouldn't be too hard to reach. Unfortunately, it means in all likelihood that Skitzowolf will not be on the DVD. It's a pity because it's a really little movie, but I can't wait forever for Ted to roam his archives to find it. That's assuming it still exists; The only known copy of it was taped over. The search will continue through the archive but I wouldn't hold my breath. But don't worry though there will be plenty of surprises on the DVD.

     The date of release for the DVD is set to be early summer. I did this mostly because I plan on being busy much during the summer and I don't want to be hassled. Also, I don't know want the same thing to happen with the DVD that happened with GCBC2. Granted making the DVD isn't as bad making GCBC2 since I'm just working with Ted; Thus I don't have to encounter all the bullshit of trying to get Ted to be motivated, Ben's bellyaching or nay saying, or other stupid delays that plagued GCBC2.

     I still have to wait on Ted to create some of the sources for the DVD. That isn't so bad though since all it requires is for him to be physically be at his computer and work on the editing. His organizational skills might be horrible, but he is a genius when it comes to editing. He showed Will and I some clips from the extended version of GCBC. They were pure gold. I have no doubts about extended edition. Ted gave me 3 weeks until completion of the extended edition so it should be done by spring break as well.

     Hmm, I apologize if my writing appeared a bit incoherent there. I'm not sure if it sounds like I think it out. There's many things going on in my mind with school, work, and all the things I've got to get done with the DVD. But once it's done this summer and we have the release party it's all going to be worth it.

 

     All right, time for another topic change. Here's a little interesting link I found a while back. I've been meaning to post it for a while but that was when I started to get bogged down with stuff. It's a site that guesses your gender by writing. I don't really have much really interesting to say about it. I just thought it funny that both for Emily and for Claire it came back with results as male. That's not really that surprising though given who they are and how they talk. I haven't tried it on anyone else yet.

     I did however had a hypothesis about my own writing. I decided that my writing has become more masculine over this past few years. I base this solely on the fact that I've made a conscious effor at times to be more confident and determined in what I'm writing about. Anyway the results:

Jan '02 (Who Is...):

Words: 7281
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 13801
Male Score: 13453

Female to Male Ratio: 1.026

Jan' 03: (Who Is...):


Words: 11088
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 18482
Male Score: 21139

Female to Male Ratio: 0.874

Jan '04: (Who Is...):

Words: 4759
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 7557
Male Score: 10712

Female to Male Ratio: 0.705

And it looked like I was correct.


Thursday February 19th, 2004:

...

     Looking over my last post I note that I couldn't have possibly posted that yesterday. I think it was Tuesday when I posted that. But to me though it doesn't feel like it was Tuesday. It seems like much more long ago. I don't know where my mind has been lately. It certainly hasn't been thinking about anything going on in life. Today after leaving class and some of the computer labs I decided to drop by Craig's(or whomever's) place. I stayed there for a hour or two. I completely forgot about my Spanish class...their loss I guess...

     In other news I've been slowly try to get my goals done. What goals? What great purpose? That I still do not know. But I do know I got my homework finished, getting close to finishing the SBB DVD, plus some other personal goals. Looking back on it though I feel like I haven't really gotten much done. All I feel like I'm doing is grinding forward with whatever work I have. I guess the key work(this was the "word" I originally typed. It should be word.) is "work." I don't feel like I'm enjoying myself. Not that I'm not happy(a.k.a. "sad"), it's just that I haven't thought about it in awhile.

A funny side note quote: "The machines(in Delphi-Delco labs) run on sadness, we have to make sure no one gets too happy or else this place will shut down."

     *ahem* In other news in my life I'll probably be coming home this weekend. I should be excited about that, but I'm not. I guess there's a lot of things I should be feelin' that I'm not. All I've been feelin' lately is a droning noise. It's a noise of a life on perpetual loop. It's the drone of trying to get in touch with people that too busy with their life, their obligations, or what they "have to do." It's the a dry warm feeling that neither burns you up nor chills you out. It's mediocrity at it's finest here folks.

Maybe I should move into happier territory, no?

     Early today just having vanquishing my homework I decided to finally get around to playing Deus Ex 2(I guess I was going to put a link here but you'll see why not in a minute). All I can say is I wish I could have gotten to play the game. I encountered a number of errors with the game. The most annoying is the mouse cursor wouldn't show up and the frame rate was at awful levels. I could have tried to figure out what the problem was but honestly I don't give a fuck. I did some patching and I searched Google. I came to the result that it was because of my ATI video card and the makers of Deus Ex 2 creating the game specifically for the nVidia chipset.

     I promptly uninstalled the game. I then got into a discussion with Alex about how bullshit this was. We talked about this for awhile then we got into some larger argument I suppose. I basically came to the conclusion that I was sick of having to deal with BS like this for PC gaming. I said something to the effect that game makers should spend more effort on game development and less on new graphics technology. "I care about games not new spiffy graphics," I said. Our discussion went on then Alex made some ludicrous claim that hardcore games don't play Nintendo or TurboGrafx 16(or basically any old system). I told him he was full of shit. I went onto a hardcore gamer just cares about games, the hardware of the game is irrelevant.

Somewhere I had a point with all this but, alas, it has escaped my mind. I am going nowhere with this shit fast.

     Something isn't right about my life right now. Maybe it's my job, my environment, where I'm living, this week, or something else. But I know something doesn't feel right here. Is this a precursor to things to come? Am I making up shit? Does anyone care? I don't care about shit right now. I often wonder who the hell reads this and what the hell are they expecting. I can only think of that situation from my perspective so I can't imagine anyone caring about what I just wrote here. Do you care?


Wednesday February 18th, 2004:

Stupid number tricks:

     Number of days I've existed: 8698

     The date on which I'll have my 10,000th day: 9/11/2004! The 7th anniversary of the 9/11. Will I be the next Osama? Who knows...stay tuned for details!!!?

...Yeah whatever.

     Coming back from the bars it's all that great. Hell, the bars weren't all that great. I found myself drinking a little, trying to drink enough "to become incoherent." I think that worked. So here I am about to pass out. Not that I'm really drunk. I'm not drunk at all; I'm just tired. Damn sleep cycle.

     I've found myself falling into that bitter and cynical routine. That happens much lately. I don't really like it that much. Of course when I'm in this state I really don't like much of anything. I feel a disposition to dislike everything and a want to destroy anything. Not for really any particular reason, just because I want to. Maybe I'm a secret Nihilist, maybe I'm a burn out, maybe I just don't give a fuck any more, or maybe it's just because sometimes the world needs antagonist. I don't know nor care right now.

     Much of today I've found myself falling out of reality. I've been dreaming in bunches. The swarms, clusters of thoughts build of and cloud my view of reality. Today I was thinking about what it be like if your body was able to parallel process. Like you could have two thoughts who were independent of one another going on at the same time. I then thought about what it would be like controlling your body like that. I'd imagine it'd be much like one mind(mind meaning consciousness) would take over certain parts and the other would control what was left. There would be much negotiation between the 2 minds on controlling each part. Whether the 2 minds conflicted or not depends much on their root behavior or what drives their existence. As I smell the reek of smoke still clinging to my body, I ponder what drives my existence. It's a question for which I have no good answer. Probably the wishy washy middle ground would be something like it depends on what state of mood I'm in.

ID

     What a cool sounding name. Besides being an awesome character in Xenogears or a great video game company, it is the persona that encapsulates all our raw desires. Not really being hassled with thing about self awareness, thought, or any sort of high level thinking. It focuses itself tightly on one and only one goal at time. There's something to be said about this state of mind. In a world where I heard "I dunno," "I guess," "Maybe," "or something..." it's nice to think of a state of mind that entirely certain of what it is wanting and what it is doing. Many suppress their ID, to the point where it rarely defines them at all. That it is sad, because the ID really adds bold streaks to a character.

     I don't know where mind is right now. It pops in and out at random points with out much of a reason. But like the rest of my personality it feels random and not really in sync with much else. I don't know what people think of me much(mostly because I'm not other people). But I imagine that many of those people would probably characterize me as random or not making much goddamn sense. If that's the case, I don't think it's much of a bad thing. I like randomness; I like chaos; I like not knowing what's coming next. I guess that's why I dream so much; Reality is too much structure for me sometimes.

     Circling back to my thought about ID, I find it great that it exist that it exists. It makes us feel alive. It's what drives us away from that passive state of mind and forces it into an active drive. A drive into what one wants to force into reality. What do I want to force into reality? I find myself stumbling over this questions a few times in the day. Most the time I'm busy with all these little details in my life to not care about them. But other times I see the whole picture and a push to go somewhere.

     I was talking to someone,whom I forgot already, the other day about how people make such a god damn big deal about sex. I think it's stupid. I wish people would think about more casually in sense they think about all the other little pleasures they think about life. I wish they would just go with what their body feels is right instead of their mind. Of course I'm not saying doing something completely stupid like unprotected sex. I'm just saying not getting themselves wrapped up into their thoughts about it.

     Of course I am one to say that. Am I? Did I just say that? I'm pretty sure I just wrote, felt, and thought it. I must have. Right now I just want to hook up with a chick, say not a god damn word, and just fuck 'til our hearts content. That however will not happen right now. It will happen at some future date I presume. Sooner or later? I don't know. I won't be in the state of mind that I am in right now. So is it worth while for me to want this right now? I don't know nor care. I am who I am.


Sunday February 15th, 2004:

Stuff to Say before it goes away.

     So the weekend was long ass as expected. Saturday and Sunday I literally worked from sun up to sun down. I made probably around $356 which is great since it will pay off a number of debts I'd like to get out the way. Aside from dumb bullshit like paying bills I really enjoyed the job. It was the first time at working where I didn't feel like I was someone's bitch. Let me recap my work history in a nutshell:

Po' Folks: I bussed tables and washed dishes. The stench of the food buried in your pores like some parasite that dug into you and wouldn't let go. I was treated like shit and the job was shit.

Maxwell's Supermarket: It was a bit better but basically I was a mindless drone to be ordered mundane tasks like man the counter, weight macaroni, move shit from point a to point b, or order shit on shelves.

Dick William's Insurance Center: It was more laid back than any previous jobs. I got the job because my mom knew Colpepper "Pepper" Cooper. He's apparently a real asshole. Violations include cheating at a charity golf game tournament. Apparent my mom talk him into letting me work there. I really had nothing to do with their operations. I was given lame office chores like data entry or file sorting. Pretty lame. The one perk of the job was watch Dana Cooper(Pepper's Daughter) sort files; every time she bent down you could see plenty of her (.)(.)

The U.S Census Bureau: Once again I was another cog in the machine. I recorded information from census form and I made kits for enumerators(i.e. I took books, pencils, papers, etc., bagged them up, put them in a box, and rolled them down a line).

Delphi-Delco: Finally I was doing something relevant toward my major. Or I thought I was for about a day or so. I fill out excel spreadsheet, gloss over C/C++ code, and check other standards. It's not that fun but it pays $10/hr, I can listen to my music, and no one cares when I come in. My job is basically worthless but it gets bills paid.

Demolition: Real bitch work. I didn't mind so much, especially working with friends, learning stuff about demolition, and getting to use real power tools. But Dan "Asshole" Fuckface thought I was "wasting his money" and I got the boot rather unfairly. The lesson learned here folks is if anyone tells you that tell them "fuck you" and break their nose. Unfortunately I got to do neither.

     So what was cool about this job? Well it's about an hour commute to Kokomo which I got paid for as we work for Alliance Group(we're contracted work) and not Delphi. Next when we got their we didn't do much until like an hour or so. The place is so huge. It's a plant that would be about the size of a regular college campus. The one building we worked in had a huge parking a lot with many trucks, 3 or 4 large rooms with cubicles everywhere,a large garage filled with cars and test units, 2 big test laboratories, 10 or so office rooms, and about 5-6 conference rooms. Naturally takes forever to find someone when they're scattered all over the place. On top of that it takes forever to coordinate everyone and get them all on the same page since there's a ton of things going on.

     After that we sit in the conference room and we talk about what the plan is for the day. We worked with software engineers, electrical/mechanical engineers, and some other hourly rate employees(who are on the same level as us). Even though they are above us they didn't treat us as inferiors. What we were doing is simply starting and restarting a truck. I'm not going to go into details but basically there's a computer on the dashboard on the truck(the product is intuitively called Truck PC). We're restarting and starting to try to crash it; basically we're trying to generate error conditions so we can inform the engineers where the errors in the product might lie.

     Since we're basically testing over and over there's no emphasis on "getting something done." It's more like finding result by playing around with the Truck PC to see what happens. So in general it's more like a scientific/research/product evaluation job than anything. It's a job that pays $20/hr, only feels like it has 4 hours of actual "work," has lunches that are paid by the company, and that feels like we're a valuable part of some team. I enjoyed it much. Hopefully, they might need again for next weekend. As much as I hate throwing my weekend away, I really need the money. Plus it was such a pleasant experience I wouldn't mind having no weekend.

     Man I'm staring to get tired...it sucks because my sleep cycle is just adjust to early ass now. Hopefully, I can readjust it this week....I'm nodding off here so I leave you guys for now. More to come later this week when I'm not busy.


Friday February 13th, 2004:

Even More

     So it looks like once again I'm throwing my weekend away. Well let's say that I'm cashing it in instead for $256. I got offered today at the ol' Delphi Delco labs to go over to Kokomo(where they're based at) to work for $20/hour this weekend. Pretty sweet. Not that I really care much for this job, but I really need the money as I am broke ass. The one good thing about this job is I don't care for it anymore. I'm a man with nothing to lose. Well, I guess I could lose my job but that's not going to happen unless I do something incredible stupid.

     I've noticed I've been talking way too much about my stupid job lately. I apologize for that. It's really boring and I know no one fucking cares about it. I know I don't. I was thinking today at work about how someone could let their job become them. It's something I fear the most. I can see how that's slowly taking hold. It seems like a lot of stuff I talk about with my coworkers is CS/computer/job related. And man does it fucking get old. I try to make an effort to get away from talking about such things but I'm not much of an conversationalist. It's I just keep falling back into that "work talk" trap.

     After spending half of your waking time at something I guess it just kind of settles in. But man does it make you into a boring person. Well, I guess not always. I'm trying to keep on my toes to prevent it. So wish me luck...

Moving On

So I get this email yesterday:

HELLO SIR ,
MY NAME IS PRABHDEEP SINGH PADDA AND THIS IS MY PROFILE
ADDRESS 14-SECTOR 4,RANJIT AVENUE
COUNTRY - INDIA
STATE - PUNJAB
CITY - AMRITSAR, PIN - 143001
EMAIL ADDRESS- [email protected]
pHONE NUMBER - 91-0183-2501965
iam a huge fan of tekken series and i want to go in depth of this game.how ever
i have always played this game with playstation 1 and 2 remotes only.now i
want to take part in tournaments abroad.but what i have learned is that these tournaments
are held in arcades where they play with arcade sticks.please tell me if one has a choice
of playing with arcade sticks or playstation remotes in higher level tournaments and what
are the differences in tekken(t4 and ttt) played in arcades and the other playsatation 2
version game played with playstation remotes . well i hope there are none.
i am sure you will answer me . i got your address from your your faq which is simply
fantastic and has helped me in my game.now i will be eagerly waiting for your reply.
thank you

     Ok, seriously, I wrote a FAQ on the taunts and the costumes you can get in Tekken. There's no way it could have improved anyone's Tekken game(except in style points ). Aside from that his English is mildly atrocious; it reminds me what I have to deal with the TA's around here. But the guy sounded very honest and genuine so I humored him and answered his questions:

HELLO PRABHDEEP,

It's great nice to hear from a Tekken Fan from the other side of Globe. I have a very busy hurry schedule but I will find time to make to respond to your email. Right now I am the 2nd tier of the Eastern U.S Tekken Nationals so my training is much intense everyday. I am Heihachi master route 6 GOLD STAR 4th dan but I still have to practice much for these fights: they are intense. But I'm getting distract from the intent of your email question.

The answer to your question is that it varies. On some tournaments they have PS2's set up for the games. That way anyone can bring in any type of remotes of their desire for playing. Other tournaments on the other hand just use the Tekken arcade cabinets. Of those tournaments you can only use the sticks of course. Most of the biggest prefer the arcade sticks as they more standardized.

As far as the differences from the T4 and TTT PS2 and Arcade versions, they are minimal. You should be able to play either one and let the skill transfer over easily with much difficulty.

I hope that answers the question you've been wondering. Right now if you want an other advice for masterful play I suggest that you try out the survival in TTT and go for the biggest numbers. The longer that you can stay with the game the more you have a feel to it. You will be closely tied between you and the remote. You two will be close to one in fact. For refrences you can see this video
here( http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~conns/whois/mov/The%20Last%204.avi ) or
Here( http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~conns/whois/mov/Tally.avi )

They are copies of one my daily training routines. As you can see working to 1000 is a good workout for your Tekken strength. I am sorry but now I must go. I've got traing to get to. Take care prabhdeep and make sure to watch your f,N,d,d/f+4,4,4 and d+4>4>4>4's/

May your Tekken be strong.

Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Well that worked out pretty well...HiYa!

 


Tuesday February 10th, 2004:

Too busy

     I apologize about the last post. Or rather all the images I posted. I didn't think when I posted them; they total probably like 3 Megs. That's way too much for a website homepage. Anyway, you'll gather from the title of today's post that I was too busy to notice it for awhile. But it's fixed now. Now on to other things...

Aside from a mundane job and school work this is how my life has been:

  • IU was lots of fun. I would have preferred not sitting in a dorm room drinking, which is why I passed out early, but I had fun regardless.
  • The SBB DVD is close to finished. The people who haven't filled in their profiles are being coerced at this moment(i.e. I'm making up their profiles).
  • The GCBC DVD is slowly being worked on. I'm close to finishing the bonus disc. I just need a few more source videos and some help from Ted for some menus.
  • Tomorrow I'm going to some job fair or something like that. I guess I'm going to try to look for future employment finally.

     Work really has infringed on my happiness lately. Mostly because I'm seeing little benefit at all to doing it. So far almost all my money as went toward bills for this place and bills I still can't pay. I guess I should just be content where I'm at because it's all pretty good(i.e. life, school, friends, etc.). It' just that work isn't challenging me at all. So it sucks to have it drain so much of my time I need to spend on challenging stuff(i.e. homework or my personal projects). Getting that dumb rant out of the way, I want to talk about something else, something more cheery.

     When I'm not feeling down about work, I feel great. Lately I've felt that my mind and body I've come to a great harmony with one another. For a long while now my sleep has been really great: Great enough to where I wake up with out a use of an alarm clock, Great enough to where I wake up and realize that my next 2 hours of sleep are entirely optional. I've gotten to the point where I need only 6 hours of sleep.

     I assuming this is the result of my continued exercise that resumed after the bus trip, practically removing almost all soda and caffeine from my diet, and changing the way that eat. Lately I've just began to eat a large breakfast, and maybe a large dinner or lunch. I've noticed because of this I have much more energy throughout the day. My appetite as seem to dwindled a bit too. I've began to realize when I want food and when I need it.

     I know when I want body wants a natural release of endorphins from eating. It's fun but I've noticed that it leads to you being very sluggish. It takes a lot from your body to digest food. I've noticed this a lot recently and thus I've tried to stop eating only when it's necessary. Why? To feel alive. When you're starving and I mean really starving(i.e. getting to the point where your stomach hurts), your stupid concerns about mundane daily routines fade away. When your body tries to get every ounce of energy it has left(i.e. fat) you begin to realize what really living is.

     It's at this point I really hit the peak of my energy bursts. I've noticed it happened a couple of times during the bus trip. It's starting to happen much more frequently over these past couple of months. I've felt like I've had complete control over my body, where I'm going, and who or what I am. It probably sounds strange to some one reading this, but I've felt like controlling my eating has lead me to better controlling my life. Not only do I feel in control of my metabolism, I feel like I am controlling my body. It's not controlling me.

     Yeah, I know what you're saying. What the hell are you talking about Shawn? You do control your body. Think about that though. Do you? How many times have you felt down for no explainable reason? What about the times you feel down because your sick. There are definitely times where your body is controlling you. Either because you let it happen because of apathy or because there's something seriously wrong with your body like a disease or illness.

     At this point in my life I feel much more enlightened about who(mind) and what(body) I am. There's some sort of happiness to be gained there. It's the comfort in knowing who you are and what you like. It's the comfort in knowing you got things figured out. Above all things I know where I'm headed. And even if I can't control the events outside of my life, I can control who I want to be.


Thursday February 5th, 2004:

Life keeps going

     I must apologize for the quality of my posts as of late. They aren't the grade that I usually put. The problem is that I've been pretty busy with many things as of late so I've put this site pretty low on my list of priorities. If it's not school work, it's actual work(which I'll get to in a bit), if it's not that it's me trying to get in a little social time with people around here, and if it's not those things then it's the little projects that I've found myself doing much at my computer as of late.

     For example, the bonus disc for GCBC that I'm starting tonight. Or these few desktop pictures I did this morning instead of going to my boring Networks class.

     Six desktop posters that pretty much cover the entire Max Payne story. Each are at 1600x1200 so they'll probably won't fit on your monitor so you'll have to resize them. I left them at that resolution because 1600x1200 is my laptop's native resolution(any thing less looks like crap). Speaking of resizing, I'm going to recommend PowerToys for Windows XP. They're GUI utility tools for WinXP. Some are pretty nifty. One of them is the automatic resize tool for pictures. With a right click in Windows explorer you can set the resolution of one or more images to whatever you specify. There's also a nifty upgrade for the Alt-Tab feature. It lets you see a preview of a window so you know what exact window you're jumping to.

Moving to other non computer or work related topics...

     In theory, I like the idea of religion. Well, I like the theories/philosophies of like how we got here, ethics, and all that. But in practice it seems that people always fuck it up. I guess it's just the institutionalization of it that makes it seem worthless and not fun. It'd be a lot more fun if religion was more like...I dunno Fight Club:

The first rule of Islam is you do not talk about Islam.

The second rule of Islam is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT ISLAM....

....

...and the last rule of Islam is if this is your first night....you have to pray.

 

Or maybe if it was more hip and commercialized:

Islam! That's Malsi spelled backwards! Supplies are limited, get yours today!

 

Hmm...maybe not.

So I was at work yesterday...

     Lately I've been in a good mood at work and life in general for that matter(more on that later). But, like I mentioned in a post awhile ago, there's this creeping feeling that I think is getting to me.

     I was at work Wednesday. I was doing the ol' DCART thing again, which I'll now refer to as "taking a ride on the CART," when Dave, a supervisor, decided to interrupt me. "We need to get people up to speed on the Onstar stuff. I want you to work with Andy on it." The Onstar stuff he was referring to was this device that you put in your car. It has a built in cell phone which allows you to talk to it dial numbers, get addresses, search for your car if it's stolen, report if the car has been in wreck, and a ton of other things.

     All that's irrelevant to me though. To me Onstar is just annoying thing we have to test over and over with voice commands and other dumb tests. I didn't care to do the Onstar tests. In fact I had already had Dave once tell me the exact same thing before. I don't think he even remembered that I already know how to do this stuff. Putting aside the fact that my supervisor doesn't bother remember what he's talked to me about already, I was more concerned with the fact that now I was going to have to sit and do these stupid tests.

     The tests are so mundane that my brain just shuts itself off after awhile. Maybe that's why they usually have more than one person working at a test bench: so we don't go brain dead after 20 minutes of testing. In reality however, it's because beginning Monday we got a 6 week period do get all the tests done for this thing. As I worked on these tests I talked to the other guy I worked with, Jason, about how much BS our testing is. The day dragged on.

     Flash forward to 3 hours later, my mind was numbed bored with all these dumb tests. About the only thing good that happened in that 3 hours was I had a little discussion with Josh about how cell phones work. He was an engineer from Kokomo that was down here to answer all the questions people had about the tests, equipment, and we're doing. He had a lot of technical details that applied to some of the hardware that we were working on. But other than that my mind hurt from the boredom. It got to the point where I had to leave 30 minutes early. I had this claustrophobic feeling. I guess I felt like this might be what the rest of my life would be like: boring, uninteresting, mundane, bland, sterile, and no fun. I felt a little better after I left, but it kept with me throughout the night. I didn't stop thinking about it until I went over to Alex's to smoke a little and watch Seven Samurai.

More of this to come...


Sunday February 1st, 2004:

This latest post is brought to you from the MSEE building on the Purdue Campus in snowy West Lafayette...

     So why am I here? Well I'm downloading Adobe Encore(a professional or near professional DVD mastering software). I think I'm going to need it for the GCBC DVD. The tools I used to do the Raven don't have any capabilities for subtitles or numerous audio tracks. So what's the status of the DVD?

     As far as acquiring content I'm about 70%. There's still big items on the menu but they're going as fast Ted as Ted can do them. And then there's other stuff that hasn't got started yet because they depend on other things getting done first. I've looking up some pricing for the materials I need(cases, inserts, Dual-sided and Single-sided DVD-R's) and I think for all the stuff I'm going to buy is going to be around $150-$250. This however depends on demand of course. Right now I've 15 people who have personally asked for a copy. That figure is 17 if you include Ted and I. So I'm guessing the number to shoot for is 25 copies but we'll see. I'll take requests up until I actually order the materials. If anyone else wants one after that, they might have to wait.

     Once again if you're really sure you want one(enough to pay for $ for it), you can email me. And by really sure I mean I will make you a copy and I'll expect you to pay...or else.

 

     So other than the occasional work on the DVD, my actual job, and school. I've been playing a lot of Xenogears lately. When Jon through that party for everyone leaving back to college I took over my computer and created a lot of copies of his playstation RPGs. This man made it his goal back in the day to collect every Playstation RPG ever made. While I doubt he seriously has all of them(I'm counting worldwide) I'm pretty sure he has close to every domestically released one. He even has the quite rare copies of Persona and Persona 2: Eternal Sin(very good console RPGs to check out by the way).

     Anyway to get back to Xenogears, it's still my favorite console RPG. There's not many games you can call epic, but this is one of them. I'll give you an idea. When I first played it through I spend over 100 hours playing the game. And that's still not doing everything possible that there is do in the game.

     The only real weak part of the game is the translation leaves something to be desired. It's not horrible, but it's standard translated Japanese RPG fare: At some points things don't make logical sense the way it's phrased; sometimes the characters talk about things they shouldn't know; and then there's just parts that seem odd because it's cultural differences we don't pick up on. The translation gets the job done, but I imagine it could be much better. Regardless it's a fun ride. I highly recommend it.

     Catch you guys on the flip side....


Saturday January 31st, 2004:

Getting the word Out

     Will, Newt, and I have came up with some great phrases to advertise one the greatest inventions known to man: Box Wine. There's are just a few key phrases:

Put that Merlot below...go with the box!

Put that Chardenet away...go with the box!

Put that Cheble(sp) to sea...go with the box!

     While I'm still getting the word out you've probably noticed a slight change in the website. Well you have if you're running Internet Explorer since you saw the notice. I've fixed the site so that it looks correctly in Mozilla Firebird (also I suggest going into tools>options>web features>fonts&colors and setting the monospace size to 16). It's now my default web browser. If you haven't tried it out I suggest do. It's definitely a leap above IE 6.0 and worth giving it a run. Why? Here's a few reasons:

  • Tabbed browsing in a great idea.
  • A build in popup killer.
  • It has a link search feature where you just type in the first few characters of the hyperlink name and it jumps to it.
  • A built in download manager.
  • All the keyboard shortcuts and layouts in IE
  • It has extensions that let you put more components in to the browser: mouse gestures, dictionary search on a right click menu, and others.
  • Built in search (though I suggest the Google Toolbar on this site).
  • It will recognize all your bookmarks from IE.
  • It isn't tied to the operating system which is potentially very dangerous considering a number of bad bugs that IE has.

     Looking back now it's pretty obvious that Microsoft has abused it's monopoly position by tying IE to the operating system. After eliminating Netscape almost completely they stopped worked on the browser since they already gained what they wanted: marketshare. By now, popup blocking and tab browsing should be built into IE but they've already said they won't put in popup blocking until the second service pack for Windows XP comes out. That's about all I have for now. Peace everybody...


Tuesday January 27th, 2004:

Throwin' some words out there

     I'm some what at drunk level. Not exactly but close enough for your guys purposes. Box wine Monday still seems in full effect. My kung fu is strong as it were. I'm at that level were I can transcend the keyboard between my thoughts and this HTML file. I've got a few things here and there to say so listen or don't...it makes no difference to me.

Where am I going?

     So it's my last year at Purdue. I've got to get started pretty soon at looking at stuff to do after school. There's a lot of CS people I know who are getting some good jobs. The more I think about it the more I don't like it. Not the getting job thing. It's just the thought of what I'm becoming or where I'm going. Ever since I've been back to work at Delphi I've felt more and more like this isn't what I should be.

     I look around and see people that have themselves tied intricately to their jobs. I don't want to be that. I don't want to be my job, at all. Well, I don't want to be if it involves me programming computers for the rest of my life. It's just so boring and I don't like it. Well, let me take that back. It can be interesting at times and I do like it at times when it's challenging me. But it doesn't define me as a person. Programming and computers aren't my life and I don't want it to be my life. I've seen that road and I don't want to go down it.

     Here's an example I'll throw out for what it's worth. I was talking to this chick I work with. I was chatting with her a bit at work and at break. She was telling me how she got a job a Lockheed-Martin in D.C. Pretty cool I suppose, she'll be making around 50K/year. She was telling me how she felt about that and her boyfriend. The way she talked the boyfriend it sounded like they had just stayed together because it was a routine. She told me that actually that she wished that he "fucked up" so she had a reason to end it.

     Already with red flags being waved in my mind about this situation, she goes on to tell me how he joined the Air Force. She then tells me that he gave her a ring just recently before he's to head out. She elaborated that it wasn't a wedding ring. I retorted with "so it's like a down payment?" She laughed and yeah something like that. She went on about how at the last minute the guy was like "I love you so much." She talked with much apathy, no casualness, about the situation as she talked about it didn't mean much to her. She further elaborated how the guy is probably feeling inferior to her as his job beforehand was daycare service and he still lives with his parents.

     I didn't like what I hear at all. It wasn't that I was disgusted or something like that. I just thought there was something wrong with this situation: Her letting the relationship going on when they're going to be far apart, her not really caring about the relationship, and her looking down on him for having a job in daycare and living with his parents. Should she leave a relationship that she isn't going to try to fix? Isn't the point of being in a relationship is love? Just because you don't make as much money as another person does that you better than them? Just because someone does make that much money to live own their(comfortably) does that make them any less of a person?

     I'm not going to try answer this question here. I'm just going to say that I feel there's something wrong about this situation. This little scenario, compounded with my own, makes me wonder where I'm going. I'm trying to keep on guard against becoming something I don't want be. I'm hoping and I'm trying anyway. Who knows? Maybe I'm wrong and this isn't a terrible tragedy.

Transcension

     ...another word I'm adding to my list of cool words. Not only does it sound cool but I love the concept: pushing the boundaries we have as people. I always try to go beyond what conventional though dictates to me about things. I realize out mind is the greatest thing we have. It lets us escape any confines of reality we might have. It gives us the ability to thing beyond our existence, our body, or our 5 senses that define the world for us. It gives us the ability to move things from the world of abstract reality into concrete reality.

     I'm getting weird and abstract so pardon me if I don't make any sense. I'm a dreamer. I like to think out side of the boundaries of what is. I like to think what could be and go beyond that. There's a much weird conflict between my those two schools but I like it. I try to keep to the mind set that the real world is only a few steps from the dream world. If you can think and believe in one world it can be accomplished in another in the other. Well sometimes anyway.

     While I think of myself as a very ordered person, there is a streak of chaos in my being. There's a part of me that wants to tear things apart because I can. There's a part of me that one things not to work because it make life what it is. There's a part of me that knows whatever gets destroyed can always be rebuilt in some form or another. Maybe it can't be built the exact same way, but that's what makes life spontaneous and not entirely predictable. It makes me smile...

     There's another side, part of transcension I wanted to get to but I'm leaving that for a bit later. It might be because I'm drunk or tired, but I want to lay down here right now and think for a bit without typing stuff...


Sunday January 25th, 2004:

So much bloody business

     Before I dive into any topics I just want to post this. It's an email about those wanting to preorder the GCBC DVD. I emailed to everyone but since it's sometimes flaky I decided to solve that with redundancy.

Hey there people. So if you haven't heard yet I'm working on the DVD for Good Cop, Bad Cop and a Rogue. Yes, I know there are some of you out there saying..."why the hell are you wasting your time making a DVD to the worst Gohmann film ever?" To those people saying that, this message is not for you. And to answer you question, it's because I want to and I think it's going to be a terrific DVD. For those interested in what's going to be on it, visit my site(hint: it has something to with a lot of Ted movies and the movie "Good Cop, Bad Cop"). I'm not here to pitch the DVD people. No, I'm here because I getting a list of people who want it. I've recently finished work for the cover. Some time soon I'm going to buy the DVD cases, print out the cover, and buy the DVD-R's necessary to make them.

Sam, being the smart man that he is, suggested I make a list of people who really would like one. That way I have some sort idea how many covers, cases, DVD's I should order. If you're curious about price, well I don't know. I'm going to throw out the figure $7-12, but I have yet to get all the pricing estimates so I don't know. It all depends on:

A: The cost of materials
B: The amount of people that want the DVD

If the Raven DVD was any indication, I'll probably come out even once again(the small profit in DVD's I had was handed out at Christmas at Steak N' Shake '04). So to bring this message to an end I'll just say if you're interested in buying the DVD email me at [email protected]. Also, if you're serious you better be really serious. When it comes time to make these things and I end up with a lot of discs and nobody buying I'm going to be very angry. And you wouldn't like me when I'm angry...

Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
-http://www.shawnconn.com/

     And another reminder: People have 2 weeks left to fill in their profiles for SBB. You know how many I've gotten? One. Mike Ralia was nice enough to fill out his. Everyone else, as expected, totally ignored my email. It's annoying trying to get so many people to do one simple thing, but whatever...

Moving on...

     When I was finishing up Max Payne II the other day I noticed something really great about one the titles in the game. In the first game, the first act is called "The American Dream." The lazy chapter of the 2nd game is called "Waking up from the American Dream." It's very fitting title for what happens at the end of the game. It's a very small thing and probably very little people noticed. It's things like that in video games that make me call BS when people say video games aren't art.

"So what's been going on?"

     I'm sure a lot of you people out there don't care about the mundane details of my life. I've noticed I haven't posted a thing about what I've been doing up here since I got back. Well here it is for you people that really care.

     So I'm living with Landis and My now. That's cool, they're both great guys. As far as roommates they're close to non existence. What with 2 of us working, 3 of us being in our senior year, and 2 of us having girlfriends we all have varied schedules which means I see very little of them. I don't know mind it so much, but it got to me a bit this weekend. My was here for about 3-4 hours then he left again. I guess that's going to be the situation for the rest of the year.

     As far as work and classes go. Work has been good. It's still the same mundane job but I've changed. I've realized fun is where you find it. So I've tried to enjoy the new people I meet, the music I listen to, and the coding I've started to do (technically it's not part of my job but I'm doing it anyway for part of the stuff I'm working on). School has been decent. So far the work required hasn't been very little. When things start to pick up in a week it might get harder but I don't think it will that much.

     The only complaint I have with my classes is my Spanish class sucks. It's taught by an Asian chick with an accent. There's no problem that's she Asian. It's the fact the accent isn't not one from a Spanish speaking country. It's already hard enough to learn a foreign language(let alone learn it well). It doesn't help that I have to wrestle with another accent on top of another. And aside from that her teaching sucks a lot. But that's all I'm going to say about school. Overall my experience back at Purdue has been good.

Right now I think I'm going to leave it at that. I was going to get onto some more interesting topics but I've lost my heart to write. Sorry about the low quality of posts. I shall return again soon...


Tuesday January 20th, 2004:

Burning Out

     I've gotten much stuff done this first week here at Purdue again: I've gotten both websites back up; I've started to finish up the SBB 2.0 DVD; The cover for GCBC is done( as well as most the movies on the bonus disc); I've started my old job; And I've began to start the end of this last semester at Purdue. I don't know if I'm enjoying myself though. I feel well accomplished, that's for sure. But sometimes it hard to accomplish things that will make you happy.

     You can't control at all what the world around you does. You can sometimes coerce into the same sphere of reality that you desire, but many things are just out of your control. The only thing you can be sure(disregarding some extreme circumstances) that your in control of is your own body. This fact has been reverberating through my thoughts as of late. Most of these thoughts have been about controlling my well being, state of mind, self-confidence, and most importantly, my happiness.

     The thing is about being happy is you ultimately decide whether you're going to feel happy or not. Many situations in world force us into a situation that drains all happiness from us. Dwelling on certain events is a good example how your mind decides not to be happy. While most of the time it's an unconscious decision, it's still a decision. We can ignore the problems that make us unhappy, we can decide a remedy then act on it, or we could come to terms with the events that make us sad and just move on with our lives. Making choice depends on the person. Some won't proactively try to make themselves happy; they'd rather the winds of life blow them toward whatever mood comes natural. Other, more strongly willed, people will decide that they're unhappy and do things to move them away from this state.

     I'm not going anywhere with this I think. I'm just writing here as a reminder to myself. I've been reminding myself not to be depressed. It solves nothing and just serves to keep me from achieving my goals. So before I keep rambling on I'll stop here and jump onto another topic...

What I've been playing/reading/listening/watching to lately

     In this section, as the title suggests, I'm going to list off some media I've been absorbing lately. Basically they're a few mini reviews of stuff...

Playing: Max Payne 2

     I been playing it on and off for the last month but I just finished the hardest mode just last night. Don't let that statement fool you though. It's not a game that will last that long. In fact you'll be lucky if you get 20 hours of the game(and that's going through the game's 3 different difficulties). It definitely shorter than the first Max Payne and will leave you wanting more.

     But maybe because it's really good. It's basically the same thing that made Max Payne so good plus a great physics engine tweak, a few extra game modes, better graphics, and a continuation of the Max Payne storyline. I definitely recommend it, especially if you liked the first. But I have to say the game isn't worth $50. It's a very solid title for $25-30, but for $50 I expected a bit more.

Listening: The Best of Bond 40th Anniversary Edition

     Like the name suggests, the album is basically the collection of all the opening songs to every 007 movie. And the great thing about the songs are no matter how much a number of bond movies suck almost all of their songs are pretty good. Even my 2 most hated Bond movies (License to Kill and The World Is Not Enough) have pretty good opening songs. The only other thing I wanted to mention about this album is that it's pretty interesting to hear such a wide variety of songs. All the songs are dated to the time period they were made in and it's pretty obvious just by hearing them. Without even knowing the movie it was from, I could easily point out which songs were from the 80's and the 60's.

Watching: The Chemical Brothers's Singles 93-03 DVD

     I got this DVD for Christmas. I just finally got around to watching the rest of it just this week. If you're a fan of the Chemical Brothers you'll love this DVD. On the DVD is:

All their music videos
Interviews from all the people who have done vocal work as well as some other artists for them
Interviews with the brothers themselves
Some live performances
Outtake stuff

     It's all really good stuff. If you haven't seen any of the chemical brother's videos, they're amazing. Since they're techno artists most of the time the video has very little to do with them performing. Thus the directors are free to create whatever the hell they feel like. Just like like with the Chemical Brothers, you're not sure what you're going to get but you can be sure it's going to be good.

     The interviews are somewhat informative. It's hard to make out almost all of them. It seems like every other person interviewed is in a dim lit area, wearing sunglasses, mumbling much, and speaking with a British accent. All of these make it tough to decipher what they're saying half the time. But other than that it's pretty good. Perhaps of all the interviews my favorite has got to be Spike Jonze's commentary(he directed the Chemical's Electrobank video).

Before I forget let me reiterate to people that are SBB veterans...

Ok, people I'm sending out this email to you like it's important. Of course most than half of you are going to ignore anyway so I'll try to get your attention right now: NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT. I'm trying to finish off version 2.0 of the SBB Collection DVD-ROM. The DVD-ROM is going to be pretty similar to the last except for the fact that it's also going to contain the entire website as well. This way the website will still be around forever. The website is going to be online for another 8 months before my Purdue account goes dead for good(and hence the webspace that holds it). So, in order to finish this shit up I need you people to help me.

Yes, that's right. I need YOUR help. So I implore you to help me finish off the profiles I need. That and find the other pictures I need.
Also, if you want to make an final changes to YOUR profile you'd better email me them within the month so I can finish it. Otherwise, it's staying for good...

Yeah, I know. You don't give a fuck. 25% of this list probably never got this message. And about half of you other 75% have already hit delete. But I ask you to keep reading.

Ok, besides make sure your profile is what it is I also need you to help me get a hold of the following people to finish their profile and send in a picture:

*************************************************
Can't contact

Andy Hainline
Amy Brooks
Anna Holmes
Brad Rajchel
Chris Johnson
Chris Schneider
Daniel Elliot
David Crawfords
Eli something or other
Jared Davis
Jason Bumba
Jeremiah Cutright
Jeremiah Rasche
Matt Chinn
Mike Lawerence
Patrick Grace
Nathan Johnson
Rachel Olivera
Vincent Damn
Virgina Keeney


*************************************************
Can contact

Brian Young
Chris Magness
Colin Triplett
Devin Triplett
Dustin Ingram 
Jeremy O'Brien
Jimmy DeVoire
Lindsey Douglass
Mandy Schneider
Ray O'Connor
Ricky Christensen
Roger Knight
Shannon Kimble
Shannon Moses
Sheri Lossner
Steve Sparks
TJ Fleener
Kevin Dennis
Nick Andres

*************************************************

You'll see I've separated the two groups of people into 2 nice categories. The first group is people I have no fucking clue how to get a hold of. So if you do know how to get a hold of them do me a favor and forward them this email, and send me a email at [email protected]. The second list are people I know how to get a hold of, or know that you group of people know how to get a hold of. Either way help me get the word out.

I'm going to make sure I keep sending this message to different people for the next 2-3 weeks or so that it filters down to everyone. Sometime by the next month I'm going to finalize the DVD-ROM. If people still have filled out the profile by then I'm going to make sure I've found the worse pictures ever of them and fill out their profiles myself. I've tried for years to get people to fucking fill out their damn profiles and if they haven't by now....well fuck them. I'm sure what I come up with is more clever than anything they could have written.

Take care and godspeed veterans of SBB...

...this is the email I've been sending out to people to get their profiles done. If you can help in any of the way(listed in the message) please do.


Thursday January 15th, 2004:

Who is the man with the name that rhymes? More like where is the man with the name that rhymes...

     Yes, I know I've been gone for over a week. I've been very busy. When I'm not working I have class. When I don't have class, I've been working on a number of personal projects. And when I'm not doing that I'm sleeping or doing other things that revolve around me enjoying my life. For about half a week I've been hard at work on this:

     Yeah, the cover for the Good Cop, Bad Cop DVD. It took me a while to design, layout, write, and all the other stuff to get it done. When I finished that I've working at compiling all the video that's going to be on the DVD. When I'm not doing that I'm transcribing the text for the movie. Needless to say it's been a very GCBC week for me.

Pictures!

     I'd say more if I wasn't so busy. So instead of saying a lot I'll just show these; Some of the best pictures that were taken on the bus trip. Their stories have much more words than I feel like writing today. Adieu people.

     Bad Dudes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Not Drunk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Steph is the Coolest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     The Druken Redeye Project

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Party People

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Just the Pimpin' in Me


Saturday January 6th, 2004:

The Trip

     I'm not going to chronicle the whole trip like last time; It took forever to do last time I did it. Anyway to sum it up we went through Kentucky(where we broke down), stopped in Maryland and DC briefly, traveled up to NYC, then to Hartford, off to Boston, Portland, over to Hanover(Dartmouth College), to Niagara Falls(both NY and Canada), then to Cincinnati, and finally back home.

     Over the trip I read a couple of good books. One was "Game Over: Press Start to Continue," a great book that covers mostly the history of Nintendo up to the introduction of the N64. The other was "Nueromancer," William Gibson novel that introduced the world to Cyberpunk. Aside from the books read, there was also much silliness on the trip. Forrest, Sam, and Emily keep wanting to call me the star of the trip. I guess that's because of all the silly pictures taken of me on the trip( you'll probably see many of those soon).

     On another occasion the trio were talking about how I should have my own TV show. From what they were talking about, it seems like it would basically be the same thing this website is but in TV form. I'd love to do, but alas I don't have a video camera. That and I would need someone else to film for me. Maybe when I get into serious cash I can try it but right now it's not feasible.

Good Cop, Bad Cop: The DVD

     Preliminary work has already started for the DVD. Today and yesterday I've been busy trying to get a lot of work for the bonus features for the DVD. Yesterday I also started work for the DVD case. This is what the DVD is likely to contain:

  • Good Cop Bad Cop (Theatrical Release)
  • Good Cop Bad Cop (Extended Director's Cut Edition)
  • Director and Actor commentary
  • Latin subtitles and audio track
  • GCBC Trailers, Teasers as well as GCBC2 Trailers and Teasers
  • Veins on Johnson I & II
  • Moon River
  • The Space Between
  • The Cage
  • Take It Easy
  • Various Trailers
  • Mockingbird Authentic Soccer 2K
  • St. Anthony's Athletics
  • Sell Drugs...?
  • The Milkman Cometh
  • The Star Wars Stop Motion Special
  • Tatoonie Gang Bang
  • Dragula
  • Skitzowolf( If licensing can be worked out with Wormina Films)
  • Plus more!

     I'm looking for a Summer '04 release but it depends much on Ted so who knows. It's looking like it will be released before GCBC2 to generate excitement about the upcoming film.


Thursday January 4th, 2004:

Merry New Year

     It's good to be back home even if it's going to be for only a few days. Expect a bigger post later on about the bus trip. It's not going to be an entire story like the last one, but rather more like a highlight reel. I'm doing this to save my fingers a lot of work. Anyway, I'm about to head out to meet people and such before I head over to Sarah's at 6 tonight. Maybe a party will happen there...maybe not.

     Before I go I've gotten the awards for the bus trip...and here they go:

Ass of Steel Award: Steve Knight for driving the bus hours and hours on end.

Runner up Ass of Steel Award: Craig Lee for Navigational planning, driving, and getting the bus back to work order

Where's the Ammo?: Josh Newton for always missing stuff on the bus and taking forever to find it.

Moneysaver Award: Steph Keith for making the trip a 1/4 or 1/2 cheaper because of the hotel discounts.

Sober to Drunk in less than 30 minutes Award: Emily Summerfield for getting incredible trashed in the shortest amount of time ever, then passing out while thinking she's in a videogame.

Got's Sass in his Ass Award: Will Davis for being the best damn dressed person on the trip.

Oops Award: Forrest Flemming for yelling out "Fuck" in the middle of the zoo with tons of kids around.

Master Photographer Award: Sam Vaughn for taking some of the funniest damn pictures on the trip.

Main Character of the Trip Award(not self proclaimed): Shawn Conn for being very goofy, growing a funky 'stache, and having some of the silliest pictures of the trip.

Shop 'til you Drop Award: Sarah Rogers-Winner and Victoria Richardson for making us wait 2 hours in NYC while they shopped alot(Emily would have tied as well had she not already won the drunk award).